Award for best organ donation feature film: Transplant community to vote

In a lead-up to the second Donate Life Film Festival June 11-12, the nation's organ donation and transplant community will vote for the best organ donation feature film of all time.  The four nominated films are Seven Pounds, Return to Me, John Q and Blood Work.

Nominations were generated by the Philadelphia Transplant Movie Night, a group of transplant recipients, living donors and families of deceased donors who meet quarterly to watch films with a donation/transplant theme. Donate Life Hollywood helped to set the criteria: the film must be entertaining to watch, enlighten viewers about the donation process, and inspire people to become organ donors or to think positively about organ donation.

Attendees were asked to pick their top four nominees which resulted in a list of 11 unique titles for consideration.

"Each film's votes were tallied and the top four vote-getters qualified for final consideration," explained Jim Gleason, a heart recipient who organized the movie night and developed a website that collects all organ donation-related films. "We projected the list of 70 transplant movies currently in our database as a reminder of the films we knew about and have seen in our five years of hosting Transplant Movie Night here in Philadelphia. To the best of our knowledge, this is the most complete listing of movies with a transplant in their storyline in the world."

Donate Life Hollywood, a national campaign to encourage accurate and inspiring donation and transplant storylines in television and film, will solicit votes from thousands of people touched by organ and tissue donation and who work in the donation/transplantation field.

The winner will be honored at the Donate Life Hollywood Inspire Awards Dinner, the climax of the second annual Donate Life Film Festival, on June 12 at the Paley Center for Media in Beverly Hills, California.  The winner's cast, director, writers and producers will be invited to attend.

Tenaya Wallace, campaign director for Donate Life Hollywood, noted that "The award testifies to the power of film to not only inspire an audience, but to save lives."