Quick Brown Fox- Project Status

A White Noise Production

Project Status

Winter 2008

November was Alzheimer's Awareness Month. My mom would have loved the irony of it: an awareness month for the ultimate attack on awareness. She was a high school English teacher and a crossword addict and always relished a good play on words. Later on came a time when she was a self-appointed ambassador for Alzheimer’s Awareness. “You’ll have to be patient,” she would say to a waiter or clerk, while she fumbled with her credit card. “I have Alzheimer’s Disease.” I was proud of her. She was youthful, stylish, in her sixties and could have faked it. Instead, she managed to gracefully increase the Alzheimer’s awareness of that waiter or that clerk, leaving them to ponder their new knowledge about a disease they may have thought struck only the very old and feeble. Read more of Ann's essay on SeattlePI.com.

Watch HealthTalk.com's recent tribute to Ann Hedreen's mom, whose story is told in Quick Brown Fox. Listen to the archived January 6, 2007 edition of the wsRadio.com program, Coping with Caregiving, in which host Jacqueline Marcell interviewed Ann Hedreen about Quick Brown Fox. It's the 4th segment.

Recent screenings of Quick Brown Fox include the American Public Health Association's 2006 annual meeting in Boston, the 2006 Doris Honig Guenter Women & Film Festival in New Britain, Connecticut and ElderHealth Northwest in Seattle, followed by a panel discussion with Ann Hedreen and representatives of the King County Dementia Partnership project. Ann was also interviewed recently on Seattle NPR station KUOW's Weekday program.

Women in Film Seattle has honored Quick Brown Fox with a 2006 Nell Shipman Production Excellence Award for Best Documentary. And Librarians take note! Quick Brown Fox is currently available for only $19.00 to public libraries, thanks to a generous underwriter. Click here for ordering information.

"An informative, thought-provoking film which will linger long in any viewer's mind. Highly recommended." --Educational Media Reviews Online.

Quick Brown Fox aired most recently on KCTS public television in the Northwest in June 2006. It was shown in May 2006 at the Frye Art Museum in Seattle and in March at the 7th annual Through Women's Eyes International Film Festival in Sarasota, Florida.

This is an important film - for our parents, for ourselves and for all those who stand in the path of this terrible disease." -- Ron Reagan

Nominated for an Emmy for best documentary, Quick Brown Fox made its European broadcast debut on YLE Public Television in Finland on January 11, 2006 and made its North American premiere on KCTS (Seattle's PBS station) in late 2004.

Women Make Movies took Quick Brown Fox to MIPDOC in Cannes in April 2005. Closer to home, it was shown in November 2005 at Portland, Oregon's Northwest Film & Video Festival.

"Kudos to Seattle-based filmmakers Ann Hedreen and Rustin Thompson for making a universally relevant film that arose from a highly personal and painful experience," wrote Video Librarian in its 2005 review. "Combining family history, personal memoir, and a doggedly determined quest to explore and explain every aspect of Alzheimer's, Quick Brown Fox is both a heartrending mother-daughter story and a valuable and informative primer for families with members suffering from this devastating illness that attacks the brain. Recommended."

Quick Brown Fox had its broadcast debut on Thursday, October 21st, 2004 as part of KCTS TV's new primetime documentary series, "About Us." In his Seattle Times preview of the series, critic Jeff Shannon called Quick Brown Fox "intimate and emotionally intense... a soul-searching quest to understand Alzheimer's Disease." Columnist Liz Taylor wrote, "Quick Brown Fox isn't tragic. It's intelligently, articulately put together, with irony and laughter and love."

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer ran an opinion editorial by Ann Hedreen on October 21, 2004. The subject was stem-cell research and Alzheimer's Disease. The P-I also ran an essay by Ann about Alzheimer's Disease in December 2002, just as work was beginning on Quick Brown Fox.

Quick Brown Fox is being distributed by Women Make Movies, North America's leading distributor of films by and about women. Based in New York, Women Make Movies is a nonprofit organization with a 32-year track record of helping its films find the widest possible audience, through television, distribution, film festivals and other theatrical screenings and media opportunities.

Quick Brown Fox screened to a packed house on Saturday, October 9 in Northwest Film Forum's brand-new space at 1515 12th Ave, between Pike and Pine on Capitol Hill. We were thrilled to be part of NW Film Forum's "Local Sightings" festival.

The Henry Art Gallery Auditorium on the University of Washington campus was the venue for Women in Film/Seattle's wonderful summer screening of Quick Brown Fox on July 28. For photos and more about the event, visit the Women in Film website.

Reaction was emotional and enthusiastic from the more than 200 people who turned out for our first major screening on April 27th at the Seattle Art Museum. Here are a few quotes from the emails we received afterwards: "Truly an unbelievable piece of work;" "powerful and very moving; "captivating and poignant;" "skillful and soulful."

In the words of one viewer: "Quick Brown Fox takes you on one woman's journey to acceptance of her mother's Alzheimer's disease. As Ann Hedreen's mother is erased before her eyes, she and her family have the generosity and the courage to share with us the pain, anger and understanding that they gain through this process. A wonderful film."

We were also honored by the incredibly warm response to Quick Brown Fox at a March 31st screening for the staff of the University of Washington Alzheimer's Disease Research Center at the VA Hospital. One doctor called it "the best mix of personal story and science I have ever seen." It's hard to describe how it felt to hear from doctors and scientists who have made Alzheimer's research their career that we have succeeded in dramatizing why they all work so hard.

One of the many reasons we are so happy about being distributed by Women Make Movies is because we know they will help us reach many more Alzheimer's research, education and support groups than we could hope to reach on our own.