I Have a Sister
Amrys O. Williams, director
Recorded Apr. 8, 2008.
The film
"I Have a Sister" tells the story of how an adverse reaction to the DPT vaccine left the filmmaker's younger sister with brain damage.
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Flash videoBiography
Amrys O. Williams was born and raised in Albany, NY. She received her bachelor's degree from MIT in 2002 in Brain and Cognitive Science and worked at MIT for a few years after graduating. She began a graduate program in the History of Science department at UW-Madison in 2005 and received her master's degree in 2007.
Currently working on her Ph.D., Amrys's research interests are at the intersections of history of science/technology/medicine and environmental and agricultural history; her MA paper was on 4-H clubs in Wisconsin in the 1930s and 1940s and how the state's 4-H club leadership drew on ideas from ecology and rural sociology to promote a holistic vision of rural reform during a period of economic and environmental crisis. Her dissertation research will expand upon this, and will likely relate to the history of 4-H clubs nationwide and abroad (e.g. the International Farm Youth Exchange).
"I Have a Sister" is Amrys's first film. It grew out of a course on making documentary films about issues relating to the environment and was made possible by the artists- in-residence program, co-taught by her advisor, Gregg Mitman, and the environmental filmmakers Judith Helfand and Sarita Siegel. Amrys notes, "So technically I made other little films, but they were all less than a minute long. Other than that, I don't really have any experience in the world of filmmmaking."