Announcement

PHILADELPHIA – The department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy of the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine will hold its first annual “Bioethics Film Festival” on April 12-14 at the Annenberg Center for Performing Arts on Penn’s campus. The theme of the festival is “Authority and Rebellion,” a topic that festival coordinators hope will spur meaningful conversation about issues prevalent in society today.

“The goal is for the presentation of thought-provoking films to prompt deep and challenging bioethical questions and conversations about the nature of biomedical and psychological research, how individuals respond to authority, and the limits of the ethical,” said Ezekiel Emanuel, MD, PhD, chair of the department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy at Penn Medicine. 

The three-day festival will include screenings of Experimenter (2015), Dying to Know (2014), The Stanford Prison Experiment (2015) and Transformation (2006). Panel discussions led by Penn faculty and special guests will follow each presentation. Special guests include:

  • Rick Doblin, founder of the Multi-Disciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies;
  • Werner Erhard, founder of the Erhard Seminars Training (est) organization; and
  • Zach Leary, trans-humanist yogi and stepson of LSD pioneer Timothy Leary.

A limited number of seats will be available free of charge to the general public via the film festival website beginning March 25, 2016. Cooperating programs include Penn Cinema Studies and the Department of History and Sociology of Science at the University of Pennsylvania.

FILM FESTIVAL WEBSITE:  pennbioethicsfilmfest.org

Penn Medicine is one of the world’s leading academic medical centers, dedicated to the related missions of medical education, biomedical research, excellence in patient care, and community service. The organization consists of the University of Pennsylvania Health System and Penn’s Raymond and Ruth Perelman School of Medicine, founded in 1765 as the nation’s first medical school.

The Perelman School of Medicine is consistently among the nation's top recipients of funding from the National Institutes of Health, with $550 million awarded in the 2022 fiscal year. Home to a proud history of “firsts” in medicine, Penn Medicine teams have pioneered discoveries and innovations that have shaped modern medicine, including recent breakthroughs such as CAR T cell therapy for cancer and the mRNA technology used in COVID-19 vaccines.

The University of Pennsylvania Health System’s patient care facilities stretch from the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania to the New Jersey shore. These include the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Penn Presbyterian Medical Center, Chester County Hospital, Lancaster General Health, Penn Medicine Princeton Health, and Pennsylvania Hospital—the nation’s first hospital, founded in 1751. Additional facilities and enterprises include Good Shepherd Penn Partners, Penn Medicine at Home, Lancaster Behavioral Health Hospital, and Princeton House Behavioral Health, among others.

Penn Medicine is an $11.1 billion enterprise powered by more than 49,000 talented faculty and staff.

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