- Welcome to Independent Lens .
I'm Pete Schwaba, host of PBS Wisconsin's Director's Cut .
Albert Einstein said,
"Imagination is more important than knowledge--
"for knowledge is limited,
"whereas imagination embraces the entire world,
stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution."
In tonight's film, we meet a man who embodies Einstein's quote
in the film Jim Allison: Breakthrough .
As a scientist, Allison's creativity
in his approach to curing cancer
is as important as his scientific genius.
Director Bill Haney had already been planning
on making a film about cancer immunotherapy,
an interesting and timely enough topic...
but then he was referred to Allison,
a true American pioneer in the field,
an iconoclast, and passionate immunologist,
who after shedding the lab coat at the end of the day
could be seen playing a mean harmonica
in a Houston Blues Club at night
and sometimes with Willie Nelson.
Allison is such a unique and quirky character
that a writer of fiction
would have trouble creating such a subject on paper.
Things fell even more into place for Haney
after he completed filming on Breakthrough
when Allison was awarded the Nobel Prize
for discovering ways that the body's immune system
can be its own best advocate in the fight against cancer.
Haney is no stranger to innovation and science himself.
The director is a lifelong risk taker
who thinks outside the box just like his leading man.
Haney invented a system
for reducing air pollution from power plants
while just a freshman at Harvard.
Tonight, on Independent Lens,
he puts a passionate genius scientist under the microscope.
Breakthrough starts now
on PBS Wisconsin, your home for independent film.