Film Screening and Community Discussion: HILLEMAN: A Perilous Quest to Save the World’s Children

Film Screening and Community Discussion:

Dr. Maurice R. Hilleman is credited with saving over 8 million lives a year, yet no one knows his name. Great Falls Public Library, in partnership with Carter County Museum and One Health, will host a screening of the award-winning documentary film HILLEMAN: A Perilous Quest to Save the World’s Children at Great Falls Public Library on Tuesday, December 6 from 6 - 8 p.m.. The screening is sponsored by Humanities Montana, Great Falls Public Library and Carter County Museum. The event is free and open to the public.
The film tells the inspiring story of Dr. Maurice R. Hilleman, a man with a singular, unwavering focus: to eliminate the diseases of children. From his poverty-stricken youth on the plains of Montana, he came to prevent pandemic flu, develop the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine, and invent the first-ever vaccine against a human cancer. Now through exclusive interviews with Dr. Hilleman and his peers, rare archival footage, and 3-D animations, this film puts a human face to vaccine science, revealing the character that drove this bold, complex, and heroic man.  The screening will be followed by a discussion session with expert panelists from Indian Family Health, McLaughlin Research Institute, and Great Falls City-County Health. The Great Falls Public Library is located at 301 2nd Ave N, Great Falls, MT 59401. 
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HILLEMAN: A Perilous Quest to Save the World’s Children film screening and panel discussion is part of “Shots Felt ‘Round Montana,” a joint project between Carter County Museum, Humanities Montana and Great Falls Public Library.  In 2020, Carter County Museum (Ekalaka, Mont.) designed and produced the exhibition “Shots Felt ‘Round the World: Maurice Hilleman and the Montana origins of the fight against pandemics” using collections donated to the Museum of the Rockies by the Hilleman family, along with Montana newspaper stories that describe contemporary accounts of infectious disease throughout Montana history. The exhibit invites visitors to discover the process of scientific inquiry and vaccine development through the inspiring life of Dr. Maurice Hilleman, who was born in Miles City, and laid the foundation for the modern fight against pandemic disease. The exhibit went on display in Ekalaka in 2021 and is touring through Montana thanks to a SHARPS project grant from Humanities Montana. It will be on display at the Great Falls Public
Library from November - December 2022 during regular business hours. 

For more information on the tour, please visit https://cartercountymuseum.org/shots-felt-round-montana/

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“about us” information
Just one year after Montana had attained its statehood, the first public library in Great Falls was founded. Paris Gibson, widely recognized for his planning and development of the city, played a lesser known role in the library’s establishment. From its creation, the Great Falls library exhibited signs of being a progressive organization. Although the physical space of the library has changed several times over the years, the progressive and forward thinking that helped establish the first library has been evident throughout intervening years. The basic tenet that “the comfort, convenience and legitimate desires of all patrons, whether clad in overalls or mink coats, should receive pleasant, sympathetic and intelligent consideration by every member of the library personnel” (Smith et al. 1938), still holds true over a hundred years later. https://www.greatfallslibrary.org/

The Carter County Museum is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization located centrally on the Main Street of Ekalaka, Montana, a ranching community with a population of 331. Founded in 1936 by the Carter County Geological Society, the museum’s founding mission relates to the collection and study of dinosaur fossils and archaeological materials found on local ranches. The museum has the proud distinction of being Montana’s first county museum as well as the state’s first dinosaur museum. The CCM is one of fourteen museums on the Montana Dinosaur Trail, a passport-style tour of Montana’s dinosaur-bearing institutions. https://cartercountymuseum.org/ 

Humanities Montana is a nonprofit affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities, one of fifty-six independent councils across the United States. Established in 1972, we were created in order to better infuse the humanities into public life.  https://www.humanitiesmontana.org/