The New London County Historical Society has embarked on a project to create 5- to 7-minute documentaries and will be starting with one on the history of the pharmaceutical industry in southeastern Connecticut.

The historical society has been working on this project for a few weeks and hopes to be finished in early September, Executive Director Steve Manuel said.

"There is just this wealth of knowledge that is kind of hidden in areas and regions and towns, and we wanted to be able to tap that and deliver that in a way that people will actually view," Manuel said. "We need to reach people where they are, and where they are is on their phones."

The plan is to release the documentary on YouTube and on the Thames River Heritage Park app.

The project received a $2,000 grant from Pfizer, which Manuel said will help with costs for licensing and music. He expects the total cost of producing the documentary to be about $8,000.

Through the historical society's internship program, Manuel is getting help from Eastern Connecticut State University graduate Anny Oralle, Swarthmore College film student Sam Gardner and Kaleigh Calvao, a political science and history student at the University of Vermont.

They also are working with Frederick Shakir, an analytical chemist who worked at Pfizer from 1985 to 2000 and now works at Sheffield Pharmaceuticals. He collects local ephemera as a hobby, including information on the history of Pfizer. In his collection are articles on Pfizer that appeared in Connecticut Circle magazine in 1955 and 1965. Pfizer came to Groton in 1946 and, according to the magazine, the first product manufactured at the Groton facility was citric acid.

The documentary will start in the 1600s, with how plants were used as medicine. Manuel said the short film will discuss Mohegan Rev. Samson Occum, Gov. John Winthrop Jr. and Sheffield Pharmaceuticals, which pioneered modern toothpaste in a tube.

"That's here in New London, so there's a story to tell, and we wanted to tell that story," Manuel said of Sheffield.

While he tailored the grant application for Pfizer to be about the pharmaceutical industry, Manuel has been writing grant proposals for the video project more broadly to other prospective funders, such as the National Endowment for the Humanities.

His topic ideas for other films include slavery in New London, whaling and privateering in New London, Benedict Arnold, and Edmund Fanning, a Stonington native who went on dozens of expeditions and discovered three islands in the South Pacific.

e.moser@theday.com