Sincerely Yours, Ethel Browne Harvey
An excerpt of Sincerely Yours
Sincerely Yours, Ethel Browne Harvey is a portrait of representation in science centered on Ethel Browne Harvey and her work with sea urchins. Harvey (1885-1965) was a pioneering developmental biologist who studied the fundamental plasticity of animal cells and tissues. Harvey never held an academic title, in her lifetime witnessed someone else receive a Nobel prize for a phenomenon she first proposed, and has been largely forgotten today. The microscope and camera lucida—instruments of vision foundational to the history of biology—frame Harvey’s experience and the politics of selection in history, science, and filmmaking.
Sincerely Yours proposes that critical media are uniquely positioned to tell histories of people who have been misrepresented in the archive. Moving images and sound can create a presence for marginalized voices, show the sensorial density of embodied knowledge, and do justice to the social and political complexity of science and lived experience more broadly. Drawing on Harvey’s archive, the film blurs the lines among fiction, historical recreation, and scientific data.
Written, Directed, and Produced by Beatrice Steinert, Advik Beni, and Beth Ribeiro
Music by Nicolas Jaar
2022
Premiered at Imagine Science Film Festival, New York, NY / 2022
Screened at Science New Wave Film Festival, Cambridge, MA / 2022
Sincerely Yours (2022) can be streamed on Labocine.