My Mom, The Scientist
A feature documentary film by Thomas Allen Harris
Anticipated release 2026
My Mom, The Scientist
A feature documentary film by Thomas Allen Harris
Anticipated release 2026
About My Mom, The Scientist
"I always felt that there should be more African Americans in the sciences. It's very important for the community. It's important that young people see their role models there. Science has a very large impact on our lives, on our health, and on our technology.
So we need to be in the game." - Rudean Leinaeng
Part personal documentary, part social media project, My Mom, The Scientist
is a personal essay-style film about the filmmaker's Mother, Rudean Leinaeng - a chemistry professor and activist who taught and researched at Bronx Community College for 30-years. Born in the Bronx in 1937, Rudean was part of the first generation of Black scientists who were able to access jobs and opportunities that the Civil Rights Movement opened up in the United States. She found a love for chemistry, and science would become an integral part of her life and the lives of those she touched. What lessons can we learn from Rudean’s story in the face of a declining number of BIPOC students entering STEM fields and an era marked by national mistrust of science? The film will combine personal stories of contemporary and historical Black scientists using verité and archival footage, humor, user-generated clips, home movies, animation, and Thomas Allen Harris’s previous filmography to examine the seldom told story of the challenges and untapped potential around African American participation in the sciences.
This film aims to answer the question of why, after decades of investment in education and initiatives to increase Black representation in STEM fields, we find ourselves with so few
Black scientists.
The theatrical release and the national Broadcast on PBS will be supported
by the companion community engagement project, Scientists In The Family. SITF will engage multigenerational BIPOC families in STEM through live events and a nationwide outreach project and series to be broadcast on PBS Digital. The film and series will follow in the footsteps of the Family Pictures USA series which broadcast nationally on PBS to more than 5.3M viewers.
My Mom, The Scientist is more than just a film. It's a movement. A movement to engage multigenerational BIPOC families in STEM and inspire the next generation of scientists.
Thomas Allen Harris producer / director
is a renowned filmmaker and professor of film & media studies at Yale University. He has been recognized globally for his critically acclaimed films and television shows, including the NAACP Image Award-winning Through A Lens Darkly: Black Photographers and the Emergence of a People. His own journey in the sciences, as well as his experience as a biology graduate of Harvard University, inform this film and his company, Chimpanzee Productions, which is dedicated to producing innovative audiovisual experiences that shed light on the human condition. Harris' first PBS documentary, CRISIS: Who Will Do Science? (1989) explored the reasons behind the dearth of minorities pursuing careers in the sciences. My Mom, The Scientist picks up where CRISIS left off and will be informed by 30 years of Harris' film, media arts and scholarship.
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