Jane Barr, Writer 

Sloan Grant(s) Received: 2022, Athena Film Festival, Development Award

Project Type: Feature 

Genre: Drama

Length: 90 Pages 

Field of Science: Ophthalmology

Stage: Development

Synopsis: 

When Dr. Bath arrives for her first day of work at UCLA, there are problems immediately. She’s introduced to a bunch of white male ophthalmologists in large offices before she’s taken to the basement and told she’ll have to share an office with the female secretaries. Dr. Bath is blunt, direct and abrasively intelligent in a way her white male colleagues are not used to. She refuses to take the office, and is eventually moved upstairs to a proper office with a male colleague in ophthalmology. Dr. Bath soon finds out she’s not that welcome, and the white male scribe assigned to her is not helpful at first, second guessing her instructions.
In contrast to her job at UCLA, Dr. Bath is treated with utmost respect at Charles Drew medical school, and her African American med students inspire her to go into the black community, where she discovers the same disparities in eye care that she found in New York exist for the black community in Los Angeles. With some colleagues from Charles Drew Medical School, Dr. Bath founds the American Institute for the Prevention of Blindness, which promotes the idea of community ophthalmology through grass-roots screenings, treatments and education in lower income communities. In the film, one woman who hasn’t been able to see anything in thirty years because of her cataracts, including her grandchildren, is what partly motivates Dr. Bath’s research, leading her to come up with the idea for her famous invention, the Laserphaco probe.
It’s difficult for Dr. Bath to juggle her work obligations with being a mother, and the situation takes a toll on both she and her daughter, Eraka. Her nanny, Nadine, becomes more and more a part of their family, and she urges Dr. Bath to move forward with her idea and believe in herself. When Dr. Bath tells the head of her department at UCLA about her idea for the Laserphaco probe, he laughs at her, telling her it’s impossible. Despite her colleagues underestimating her brilliance and belittling her, Dr. Bath applies for funding through the National Institutes of Health and the National Eye Institute, but she is denied funding by both organizations.
So, Dr. Bath takes a sabbatical from UCLA. First going to France, then England, and then to Germany to find the equipment and knowledge she needs to complete her invention. Finally, late one rainy night in a lab in Berlin, Dr. Bath has a breakthrough, inventing the Laserphaco Probe, a medical device that has restored sight to millions around the world. Triumphant, Dr. Bath proves her male colleagues wrong, returning to UCLA. The morning she’s scheduled to present her patent research, her department head calls her into his office to tell her there was no way she could’ve made this scientific breakthrough, and she lets him know how wrong he is. Later that day, Dr. Bath presents her research to her colleagues at UCLA, and Excimer laser cataract surgery was born. The movie ends with Dr. Bath showcasing her device, painlessly removing cataracts and restoring sight to the grandmother who hadn’t been able to see anything in thirty years. She’s finally able to see the faces of her grandchildren, and of the woman who restored her sight, Dr. Patricia Bath.