Last night, Oscar®-nominee and Grammy® winning director, Susan Froemke, screened her feature documentary film, The Resilient Heart, during the LA Film Festival to a packed audience. Taye Diggs, best known for his role on Broadway in Rent and Hedwig and the Angry Inch, as well as the film How Stella Got Her Groove Back,and the TV series Private Practice and Murder in the First, hosted the screening and Q & A with Susan Froemke. Taye spoke from the heart about losing both of his grandfathers to heart disease, and how important the film’s subject, world-renowned cardiologist Dr. Valentin Fuster’s work is.
The feature length documentary film, which centers on the work of Dr. Fuster, Director of Mount Sinai Heart and Physician-in-Chief at The Mount Sinai Hospital, has been picked up by Amazon Prime Video and Amazon.com for a global launch, and is currently available.
Photos are of Taye Diggs and Susan Froemke during the Red Carpet, and Q&A following the LA Film Festival screening for the feature documentary,The Resilient Heart, at the ArcLight Culver City in Los Angeles, CA on June 15.
Below a very nice after-party next door at The Culver Hotel :
The Resilient Heart follows Dr. Valentin Fuster on his global trek to fight heart disease by educating adults as well as today’s new generation on how basic lifestyle changes can have a significant impact on your health. The film was directed by Oscar®-nominee and Grammy® winning director Susan Froemke, and was made with generous support from The Valentin Fuster Mount Sinai Foundation for Science, Health & Empowerment, Inc.
The Resilient Heart explores the keys to lessen the instance of heart disease on a worldwide scale. At the film’s core is the story of Dr. Valentin Fuster, a world-renowned cardiologist, and Director of Mount Sinai Heart and Physician-in-Chief at The Mount Sinai Hospital. Through his exploration of the heart at the molecular level, Dr. Fuster discovers that the real answer to fighting chronic disease lies in a much larger place: early education.
By highlighting scientific contributions ranging from basic science to translational research, the film addresses the improvement of clinical and surgical care efforts to promote lifestyles that prevent or slow the progression of heart disease. Ultimately, it shows how the intersection of science, medicine, research, education and compassion bring about changes that are not only important but also replicable by physicians and patients throughout the world to save lives.
Follow Dr. Fuster as he travels to Eldoret (Kenya), Bogota, Grenada, Madrid and Harlem. Witness the profound impacts of coordinated global health initiatives, proactive public policy, and the passion of people to better the health and well-being of populations, no matter the circumstances.
The Resilient Heart aims to inspire large-scale and systemic, society shifts toward promoting better cardiovascular health. The film was funded with financial support from the Mount Sinai Health System, and was made with generous support from The Valentine Fuster Mount Sinai Foundation for Science, Health, & Empowerment, Inc.
Susan Froemke is an Oscar nominated and Grammy winning non-fiction filmmaker with over thirty documentary films to her credit from the classic Grey Gardens (1976) to Lalee’s Kin (2001), an HBO film on poverty that was nominated for an Academy Award, to Wagner’s Dream (2012), which opened theatrically in the US and aired on PBS. Most recently, Froemke co-directed Escape Fire: The Fight To Rescue American Healthcare, with Matthew Heineman, which premiered at Sundance and was broadcast on CNN Films in 2013. A four-time Emmy winner, Froemke was the principal filmmaker at legendary Maysles Films in New York for over two decade. Her latest film,Rancher, Farmer, Fisherman is an Official Selection of the 2017 Sundance Film Festival and will air on Discovery Channel later this year.
For four decades, Dr. Valentin Fuster, MD, PHD, has been a global leader in the field of cardiology, including cardiovascular medicine, translational research, and education. He has a keen interest in decreasing the global epidemic of obesity and its impact on cardiovascular health, especially for the world’s tiniest hearts — those in our children. Dr. Fuster has published more than 1,000 research studies on the prevention and treatment of heart disease, coronary artery disease, atherosclerosis (the hardening of the heart’s arteries due to plaque buildup — a leading cause of heart attack, stroke, and peripheral vascular disease), and thrombosis (blood clots). He is also Director of Mount Sinai Heart and Physician-in-Chief of The Mount Sinai Hospital. He also serves as Director of the Zena and Michael A. Wiener Cardiovascular Institute; Director of the Marie-Josée and Henry R. Kravis Center for Cardiovascular Health; General Director of Spanish National Center for Cardiovascular Research (CNIC); President of Science Health and Education (SHE) Foundation; and the Richard Gorlin, MD/Heart Research Foundation Professor at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Dr. Fuster is the former President of the American Heart Association and the World Heart Federation.
PHOTO CREDIT: Rich Polk/Getty Images for for The Valentin Fuster Mount Sinai Foundation for Science, Health & Empowerment. News story by Jo Songei , Roger Lim , Jon Gumboc , and Georgina Tolentino.
