My latest film commissioned by UW Medicine features Charles Burt, an artist whose Parkinson’s diagnosis seemed destined to spell the end of his career. But a surgical team was able to quiet the tremors in his hands using deep brain stimulation, a surgery in which the patient has to be awake to ensure proper placement of electrodes within the brain.

The creative team at UW Medicine was able to get me and my small crew into the surgical suite to film the operation, which was unnerving! Charles was speaking with his doctors throughout the surgery, and the climax of the film is when they apply stimulation to the electrodes and ask him to draw something.

I couldn’t have done this project without the amazing team I work with, Jamie, Jenny and Zack, at UW. They brought me in early on this project so I was able to film Charles attempting to paint before the surgery, with tremors that made his work almost impossible. And then after the surgery, the contrast couldn’t be more striking.

This is the kind of work I (as a cancer patient myself) was born to do: to tell stories about the men and women who dedicate their lives to helping patients like Charles and me to live their best life. As long as we can.

The Bloomberg Greendocs festival was next-level awesome. Not only was it an honor to have my short film, Shaped by Ice, selected as one of five finalists, but the four other finalist filmmakers have given me a renewed enthusiasm for continuing to focus on environmental work. I’m leaving the festival with what feels like friends for life.

From left to right: Finalists filmmakers Thomas Klaper (winner!), Ángel Linares, Carter Kirilenko, Dan McComb and Gideon Mendel.

We all liked each other so much that we proposed the idea of sharing the $25,000 prize (over drinks the night before). The jury quashed our idea when Gideon presented it to them, and after seeing all the films, I believe I know why. It’s because Thomas’s film about migrating toads in Switzerland, which took 4 years to make, truly deserved to be the winner. Its use of humor and absolutely stunning cinematography, as well as the fact that it focused on a subject so small as to be invisible, was moving. Go Thomas and team! What an honor to share the stage with these four.

I also made some potential fundraising contacts for my Afterdrop project, which was the genesis of Shaped by Ice. And I’m on the hunt for more stories, particularly about scientists who are continuing to do the important work they do in the face of increasingly difficult and openly hostile environment to the truth of their work.

I’m honored to be one of five finalists in the Bloomberg Greendocs film festival, which is being hosted in Seattle this year. My short film about glaciologist Mauri Pelto and his daughter Jill, Shaped by Ice, will screen at Seattle Art Museum on July 16.

Shaped by Ice is an Afterdrop spinoff. Originally I wanted to find a way to link glacier science with the ice swimming record that Melissa Kegler was attempting to break. That project was unable to secure funding, but I’m thrilled this one is finding an audience and bringing attention to the vitally important work that climate scientists do.

The North Cascade Glacier Climate Project begin in the early 80s when a then 20-something Mauri Pelto began visiting a group of about a dozen glaciers in the North Cascades. His idea was to return 50 years in a row to document how those glaciers respond to climate change. The results have been sobering: two of those glaciers no longer exist, and in the 42 years he’s been visiting the glaciers, they have documented a 30 percent loss of ice.

I hope to see you at SAM on July 16 – here is your registration link so you can join us.