We Heard the Bells: The Influenza of 1918
About We Heard the Bells: The Influenza of 1918
Survivors from communities that were hit hard describe the 1918 influenza. The film then follows the search for the virus: a 1951 trip to Alaska to take tissue from bodies buried in permafrost, and later laboratory work on why the flu killed so many young adults and where it came from.
Cast & crew
More about We Heard the Bells: The Influenza of 1918
Lisa Laden wrote and directed the film for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. S. Epatha Merkerson narrates. The HHS copy is identified as ICN 006719, January 2010. The end credits name only the narrator. Other speakers are identified by graphics.
Themes
Background
The picture was issued by a federal health agency in January 2010 and points viewers to study material then posted at avianflu.gov.
Notes
- The film states that the 1918–1919 flu killed about 50 million people worldwide and 675,000 in the United States, five times the number of American soldiers killed in the First World War.
- Johan Hultin, the paleontologist tied to the Alaska recovery, and Jeffery Taubenberger of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases appear.
- Anthony Fauci is among the people credited on the catalog cast list.
- An Internet Archive copy runs 56 minutes 49 seconds.
Also available
- Internet Archive (gov.hhs.cms.006719)
- Wikimedia Commons (We Heard the Bells - The Influenza of 1918.webm)