About The Movie

ON THE LAKE: Life and Love in a Distant Place, a film by David Bettencourt and G. Wayne Miller, tells the true story of the tuberculosis epidemic in 1900s America and globally today through the lives of those that were infected and who died –– but also of those who survived. More than scientific facts and figures, ON THE LAKE touches that rare emotional cord of what life was like for millions of people infected with TB, while providing a glimpse into human nature when faced with a large-scale epidemic. Through powerful storytelling, ON THE LAKE shines new light on a major period in America’s collective history that has been forgotten –– and a disease that many today think is “dead,” but is in fact the number-two infectious killer globally, after HIV/AIDS.

The movie premiered on Feb. 13, 2009, to five-star critical acclaim by TV, newspaper and web-site reviewers. Nationwide PBS broadcasts began on March 25, 2009, and continue in major markets coast-to-coast.

ON THE LAKE has been recommended by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on their list of TB Education and Training Resources and endorsed by Harvard University’s Dr. Paul Farmer, co-founder of Partners in Health. The movie is a member of Stop TB USA and also of the Geneva, Switzerland-based worldwide Stop TB Partnership, whose board is run by an executive committee that includes members of the World Health Organization, the CDC, and the U.S. Agency for International Development. ON THE LAKE has been shown at the Harvard School of Public Health, New York University School of Medicine/Bellevue Hospital and other major universities and medical conferences.

The movie is listed on IMDB, the Internet Movie Database, the authoritative guide to everything movies. It made its festival debut on Aug. 6 at the Rhode Island International Film Festival during an evening honoring legendary actor William Shatner.

This feature-length documentary opens with America in the early 1900s –– the free-spirited era of Marconi, Edison and the Wright Brothers. But there is a dark side to the dawn of the American Century: A disease that no one understands is the number-one killer of the time. People are suspicious of strangers and even family members. Victims of the White Plague, as TB is known, are shipped off to remote sanatoriums, where doctors hope fresh air, months or years of bed rest, and good food will prove curative. Many die –– but many recover, and even meet and fall in love while hospitalized.

ON THE LAKE tells this story with never-before-seen footage and stills, interviews with TB experts, and interviews with TB survivors and their relatives. Production began in November 2007 at state-run Zambarano Hospital on remote Wallum Lake in northern Rhode Island –– a hospital that began life in 1905 as a tuberculosis sanatorium. Granted access to the hospital’s entire photographic archives and many records, the filmmakers began to depict the desperation Americans felt with this disease that can be spread by a simple cough or sneeze. They captured harsh conditions endured by patients –– sleeping outdoors year-round (even in snowy winters), for example. From Rhode Island, production moved to Saranac Lake, N.Y., the largest treatment center for TB patients east of the Mississippi; Denver, Colorado, the largest center in the West; Massachusetts; Baltimore, Maryland; and North Carolina.

The emotional heart of the movie is the many accounts of people, some now in their 80s, who survived TB and years in what was essentially exile –– miles from home, in a strange environment, cut off from family and friends except for occasional visits and letters. One account is of a man, now in his 60s, who contracted the disease only a few years ago –– most likely after exposure to the germ when he was a child living at a sanatorium. TB can linger undetected for decades before symptoms appear.

Interwoven with these stories is the medical drama of tuberculosis, an ancient disease that predates the Egyptians. As the 20th Century unfolds, doctors and nurses add a number of bizarre (by today’s standards) surgical procedures and treatments to the traditional regimen of fresh air, bed rest and hearty food. Eventually, hundreds of sanatoriums across America open –– in virtually every state. In the 1940s and 1950s, effective antibiotics are developed. Like smallpox, the disease seems to have been conquered.

But it is not.

Although the incidence in America today is low, thanks to the country’s high standard of living and advanced system of health care, globally TB is pandemic, with 1.7 million TB deaths and 9.2 million new cases in 2006, according to the United Nations’ World Health Organization. Most of these are in Africa, India and China.
To help tell this part of the story, the filmmakers brought to camera three of the world’s prominent TB experts: Dr. Richard E. Chaisson, Johns Hopkins University; Dr. Michael D. Iseman, University of Colorado and the National Jewish Health Center, Denver; and Dr. E. Jane Carter, Brown University and the RISE Clinic at the Miriam Hospital, Rhode Island’s state-funded TB clinic.

The film received this endorsement from Harvard professor and Partners in Health co-founder Paul Farmer, M.D., PhD., arguably the world’s leading scientist in the fight against TB and subject of Pulitzer prize-winning author Tracy Kidder’s Mountains Beyond Mountains:

“Tuberculosis - one of humankind's oldest documented illnesses - has been placed, by some, in the category of 'emerging infectious diseases.' 
“The truth is, TB has never gone away.  It has been and remains one of the world's leading infectious killers.  The tuberculosis sanitarium at Wallum Lake, Rhode Island is just over an hour from Boston where I teach medical students about TB each year.  For many of my students, tuberculosis can appear to be a disease relegated to medical texts and history books. 

“I applaud the efforts of Eagle Peak Media and their film 'On The Lake' to tell the human story of the tuberculosis epidemic in the United States.  We can hope greater understanding of how this dreadful illness affected our neighbors in New England might stir greater compassion - and more helpful action - on behalf of the millions who still suffer and die each year from tuberculosis around the world.”

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