Monday, December 4, 2017

Indian Point: Imagining The UnImaginable, Documentary.



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MAYBE LATER  CLOSE 
Rory Elizabeth Katherine Kennedy (born December 12, 1968) is an American documentary filmmaker and youngest child of U.S. Senator Robert Kennedy and Ethel Kennedy.
Although her father was assassinated before she was born, Kennedy consciously relates to his philanthropic mission, and her core activity is the making of documentary films that center on social issues. Those issues include addiction, nuclear radiation, the treatment of prisoners-of-war, and the politics of the Mexican border fence. Her films have been featured on many TV networks. Her cousin John F. Kennedy, Jr., his wife, and his sister-in-law were flying to attend her wedding when they died in a plane crash.

Early life and education[edit]

She was born in Washington, D.C. six months after her father was assassinated. Her mother chose the name "Rory" because she felt it bore a resemblance to her father's nickname "Bobby." On December 19, 1968 (a week after Rory was born), her mother took her to her father's grave at Arlington National Cemetery.[1] Kennedy's older brother Michael LeMoyne Kennedywas assigned as her godparent by their mother. Friends of the Kennedy family said the pair spoke almost every day of their lives.[2] When Rory was a teenager, she was arrested during a protest outside the South African Embassy. When she was 15, her brother David died from a drug overdose. Rory graduated from The Madeira School and then Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. During her sophomore year there, she organized a rally in front of a Providence supermarket. In solidarity with migrant farm workers, she urged shoppers to boycott grapes.[3]

Career[edit]

In the 1990s, Rory and fellow Brown classmate Vanessa Vadim (daughter of Roger Vadim and Jane Fonda) formed May Day Media, a non-profit organization based in Washington, D.C. that specializes in the production and distribution of films with a social conscience. Women of Substance was Kennedy's first documentary. The film was released in 1994, and the idea came out of a paper she wrote while a student at Brown on female addicts.[4] In 1998, Kennedy and another fellow Brown graduate Liz Garbus founded Moxie Firecracker Films,[5] which specializes in documentaries that highlight pressing social issues. The television networks that have shown its films include: A&E, the UK's Channel 4, Court TV, Discovery Channel, HBO, Lifetime, MTV, Oxygen, PBS, Sundance Channel, and TLC.
She directed and co-produced American Hollow (1999), a film about a struggling Appalachian family that received critical acclaim and many awards. HBO broadcast the film and publisher Little, Brown and Company simultaneously released Kennedy's companion book. Kennedy presented the documentary at Wittenberg University on September 13, 2001. After the film's presentation, she answered questions.[6] In October 2001, Kennedy traveled to Cleveland, Ohio to address the opening meeting of the National Council of Jewish Women. At the meeting, she spoke about her documentary film-production company Change the World Through Film.[7]
Kennedy directed and co-produced the Emmy Award-nominated series Pandemic: Facing AIDS (2003), which premiered at the International AIDS Conference in Barcelona, Spain, on July 8, 2002. It was funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and it tells the real stories of Aids patients outside the Western world. It was broadcast in America as a five-part series on HBO in June 2003.[8]
Kennedy directed and co-produced A Boy’s Life (2004), the story of a young boy and his family in rural Mississippi. The movie premiered to rave reviews at the 2003 Tribeca Film Festival and was awarded the Best Documentary prize at the Woodstock Film Festival; it was later broadcast on HBO.
When Kennedy was asked in a March 24, 2004, interview with Salon.com [9] about her interest in the American South, she cited her father's experiences in the region as an inspiration and starting point. In the same article, she goes on to mention that showing class differences in American culture also motivates her.
For HBO, she directed and co-produced Indian Point: Imagining the Unimaginable (2004), which was broadcast on September 9, 2004. The film takes a "what if" look at the catastrophic consequences of a radioactive release at the Indian Point Energy Center, a three-unit nuclear-power plant station, located 35 miles (56 km) north of midtown Manhattan, New York City, New York.
Rory directed and co-produced Homestead Strike (2006) as part of The History Channel’s series, 10 Days that Unexpectedly Changed America (April 2006).
She was a co-executive producer for Street Fight (2005), which chronicles the 2002 Newark, New Jersey, unsuccessful mayoral campaign of Democratic Cory Booker — then a Newark Municipal Councilman — against Democratic eighteen-year incumbent Mayor Sharpe James. The film earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Documentary (Feature). (Booker later won the mayoral election on May 9, 2006, against Democratic Ronald Rice; James did not seek re-election for another four-year term in 2006.)
Kennedy directed and co-produced Ghosts of Abu Ghraib (2007), which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and won the 2007 Primetime Emmy Award for Best Documentary. Kennedy first learned of the Abu Ghraib prison when images came out in the media, which were accompanied by a New Yorker article by Seymour Hersh. According to Kennedy, she was "horrified and shocked and disgusted" by the images of the naked prisoners and laughing American soldiers. She conducted interviews with people who were present at the prison along with those directly involved in the abuse. Kennedy's opinion of the participants changed after she interviewed them, where she began feeling they "were very humane and very much like me" and discovered they "were not monsters."[10]
She directed Thank You, Mr. President: Helen Thomas at the White House (2008) for HBO Documentary Films, which premiered on HBO on August 18, 2008. According to reviews, the 40 minute long documentary provided an interesting, if brief, glimpse into the iconic journalist.[11]
On June 30, 2009, Kennedy was invited to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.[12]
Kennedy directed "The Fence (La Barda)", which premiered at the opening night of The Sundance Film Festival 2010. The film made its debut on HBO on September 16, 2010. Favorably received, it details the woeful inadequacies of the border fence between the United States and Mexico, which has increased migrants' deaths, but does not deter illegal immigration.[13][14]
In 2011, she produced and directed Ethel, which was a documentary about her mother. The movie premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival and aired on HBO on October 18, 2012.[15] Reviews portrayed the documentary as a moving tribute, but criticized its lack of depth.[15][16] Kennedy conducted interviews with her siblings over five days at the Kennedy family compound in Hyannis Port. For the finished film, she went through "some 100 hours" of archive footage, photos and home videos.[17]
Last Days in Vietnam was directed by Kennedy and co-produced with Keven McAlester; the documentary film debuted at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2014. During production of the film, she spoke with U.S. military and Vietnam nationals now in the U.S. and said the most exciting part of the film to her was "telling the untold stories about Americans and Vietnamese who were on the ground, who went against U.S. policy and risked their lives to save Vietnamese".[4] Kennedy was reported to have signed with Nonfiction Unlimited in May 2014.[18] In September 2014, Last Days in Vietnam opened at the Nuart Theater in Los Angeles.[4] Kennedy had difficulty getting some of the people featured in her film to get involved. Out of them, she believed Henry Kissinger had the most reluctance to the project. On their reluctance, Kennedy stated: "I think a lot of those folks suffered post-traumatic stress from that moment. When I asked them to relive it, it really took a toll. Many of the people told me it took them a week to recover from the interviews. I've gotten tons of emails from people in Vietnam who can't see the film because it's too traumatic for them."[19] Last Days in Vietnam was nominated as Best Documentary Feature for the 87th Academy Awards.[20]

Activism and politics[edit]

Kennedy advocates for several social activism organizations and sits on the board of numerous non-profit organizations.[clarification needed] In March 2010, Kennedy gave a presentation at The Ritz-Carlton, where she spoke on the effects of alcohol and drug abuse and concluded that addiction and domestic violence "are intricately connected.” She also voiced her support of treatment options, calling them "more important than the criminal justice approach". Executive director and CEO of Comprehensive Alcoholism Rehabilitation Programs Robert Bozzone agreed with her opinion and added, "If you listen to Rory, treatment is more effective than incarceration.[21] Referring to the shooting of Michael Brown, Kennedy believed the reason it garnered national media attention "is that it’s a touch point that indicates a larger social challenge that we all need to mull over and try to grapple with in a thoughtful and considerate way, and I think it has to do both with race and class."[22]

2008 Barack Obama endorsement[edit]

Kennedy announced her support of Barack Obama as the Democratic Party's nominee in the 2008 U.S. presidential electionin an op-ed essay, "Two fine choices, one clear decision - Obama", in the San Francisco Chronicle stating:
Kennedy subsequently endorsed Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton in 2016.[24]

Personal life[edit]

Following graduation, Kennedy moved to New York and then briefly to Los Angeles.[25] Kennedy's brother Michael LeMoyne Kennedy died in December 1997 as a result of a skiing accident. She was with him at the time of the accident and tried to save his life by giving him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Despite her efforts, he had been fatally injured and his blood stained her mouth.[3] Kennedy attended his funeral in January 1998.[26] On August 2, 1999, Kennedy married Mark Bailey in Greece at the mansion of shipping tycoon Vardis Vardinoyiannis. Kennedy met Bailey in Washington through mutual friends after graduating from Brown University.[25] The wedding was originally scheduled for July 17 in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, but was postponed after the plane carrying her cousin John F. Kennedy, Jr. crashed en route to the event. The tent intended for the wedding became a site for family prayers during the search for her cousin.[27] In the months following John Jr.'s death, Kennedy declined to speak publicly about the plane crash. In October 1999, Kennedy and her husband moved with their dog Clementine to a new home in the West Village in a neighborhood they reportedly "loved."[25] Rory and Mark have two daughters, Georgia Elizabeth Kennedy-Bailey (b. 2002); Bridget Katherine Kennedy-Bailey (b. 2004); and one son, Zachary Robert Kennedy-Bailey (b. 2007)[28] The family resides in Brooklyn, New York. Around the time of the birth of her second daughter in 2004, Kennedy and her husband purchased a home.[29] Kennedy went on maternity leave from her filmmaking career for the birth of her son in 2007.[10] She sold her Shelter Island home in December 2009.[30][31] Her nephew Conor dated Taylor Swift in 2012. According to her mother Ethel, Swift began associating with the family after Rory attended a concert of hers with her daughters, Georgia and Bridget. Kennedy said she loved the singer and her music.[32] In July 2012, Kennedy's sister Kerry swerved her Lexus SUV into a tractor-trailer on Interstate 684. During the trial in February 2014, Kennedy defended her sister by insisting that she had "reputation for sobriety and general healthy living".[33] According to Trulia.com, Kennedy purchased a home in Malibu, California in January 2013.[34]

Public image[edit]

Prior to the 1990s, Kennedy was said to have been known solely for being the child who was born after the assassination of her father, Robert F. Kennedy. Following the plane crash of her cousin John F. Kennedy, Jr., she established notability for being the cousin whose wedding he planned to attend. Anita Gates of The New York Times wrote that Kennedy would understandably want to be known as "the one who became a filmmaker."[25]
She has elicited sympathy in some corners. Edward Klein wrote in his book The Kennedy Curse: Why Tragedy Has Haunted America's First Family for 150 Years that Rory Kennedy "had suffered more from the Kennedy Curse than any other member of the family." Klein then listed the deaths of her father and brother David, as well as her role in unsuccessfully attempting to save the life of her brother Michael Kennedy.[35]
Kennedy has spoken of her work and its relation to that of her father. "I don’t think of it as a continuation of his work, but I certainly think I was influenced by the person that he was and have made a range of choices because of what he contributed to the world. I have enormous respect for all that he accomplished in his short life and how much he was able to move people and touch people. I’ve certainly been inspired by that."[10] On January 14, 2010, Full Frame announced Kennedy and Liz Garbus would be the recipients of that year's Career Award. In the press release, Full Frame called the duo's work "unique".[36]


That's right, it's the Bowling family of Mudlick Hollow, Ky., the subject of Ms. Kennedy's documentary ''American Hollow,'' which has its television premiere tomorrow night on HBO. If many things about the Bowlings seem similar to the storied Irish-American clan that Ms. Kennedy comes from -- and she acknowledges that she found it easy to identify with them, despite the obvious differences -- that just reinforces her point about the value of documentary filmmaking.
''It's a way to access a culture that otherwise feels different and feels 'other,' '' she says. ''Then you identify and you think, 'Wow, I've been through those -- everybody I know has gone through those -- exact same emotions, the exact same things. They're just like you and me.' ''

The Bowlings go to church, do an Easter egg hunt for the children, have a big family picnic on Labor Day and sometimes argue at the dinner table. Edgar is on Prozac. Samantha's soon-to-be-ex-husband abuses her. On the other hand, Iree, the 68-year-old great-grandmother, snaps beans on a sofa on her front porch and kills chickens by hand. Her husband, Bass, speaks with such a strong Southern accent that the filmmakers have seen fit to subtitle some of his comments.
The Bowlings receive government assistance, but some make extra money by collecting bloodroot and ginseng in the woods. One of them, Neil, doesn't have much use for people who are too lazy to do work like this. ''Now if you're too sorry to get out of the house,'' he says, ''you ain't going to have nothing.''

The family's joys and trials and their take on life have brought a good deal of attention to Ms. Kennedy, although it's fair to say that the Kennedy name is at least as much an attraction as the film itself. ''American Hollow,'' which is her first feature-length film, was shown at the Sundance Film Festival last January, won top awards at film festivals in Chicago and Los Angeles and had a two-week theatrical release to make it eligible for Oscar consideration.

All her life Ms. Kennedy has been known as the one who was born after her father, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., was killed (she'll be 31 next month). Since July she has been known as the one whose wedding John F. Kennedy Jr. was on his way to when he, his wife and his wife's sister died in the crash of his private plane. It is understandable that Ms. Kennedy would now like to be known, maybe more than ever, as the one who became a filmmaker.

She arrives for lunch at one of HBO's private dining rooms overlooking Bryant Park in Manhattan, wearing a plum-colored sweater, a long black skirt (from Banana Republic) and a black leather jacket. She chooses her words carefully, like a seasoned professional, but her laugh is still slightly girlish. It's startling how much she looks like her father. Those are Bobby Kennedy's eyes looking at you over a club sandwich and sparkling water. Maybe this particular Kennedy can make a difference; maybe she can accomplish as much making movies with a social conscience as she would running for office like so many of her relatives.
She won't go as far as to say that filmmakers might be more powerful than politicians, but a recent experience must have made her consider that possibility. She had made a 15-minute film about AIDS in Africa and, after a Capitol Hill screening, she says, Senator Patrick J. Leahy, the Vermont Democrat, turned to her and whispered, ''I just want you to know that I put an extra $25 million in the budget for AIDS in Africa, and it's because of your film.'' Telling the story, she laughs with obvious pride. ''It feels like a good day's work, right?''
Making movies wasn't a childhood dream as she grew up with her mother, Ethel Kennedy, and a houseful of older siblings in McLean, Va., and she never went to film school. At Brown University she majored in women's studies. When she became aware that women were being discriminated against in addiction treatment programs and often being put in jail, she undertook a project to combat that.


'I felt like if you could draw attention to this issue from the women's perspective and let them tell their own stories that you might sort of raise awareness and have some sort of impact,'' she recalls. ''So I made a film, which was about that subject. And I really enjoyed the process.''
After graduation she moved to New York, but she has also lived briefly in Los Angeles and in Washington, where she met Mark Bailey, then a graduate student at Georgetown University, through mutual friends. Two weeks after her cousin John's death (something she declines to discuss, politely, with ''I would rather not, I'm sorry'') and the cancellation of her huge family wedding, she and Mr. Bailey were married at a family friend's estate in Greece. At the beginning of October they moved, with their dog, Clementine, to a new place in the West Village, a neighborhood they love. Mr. Bailey, a writer, was the story editor on ''American Hollow'' and has written a book of the same title, an oral history of the Bowling family.

Newlywed or not, Ms. Kennedy spends long hours at her office on the edge of SoHo and in various editing rooms. She has also been traveling to Mississippi a lot lately, working on her next documentary, which is about mental illness and how three generations of one family have dealt with it.
She is, however, still in touch with the Bowlings. After all, she and her film crew lived with them during most of the making of ''American Hollow,'' a fact that has raised some eyebrows among people who wonder how a pampered rich girl reacted to the modest accommodations. Ms. Kennedy is tactful about it, mentioning the beautiful quilts.
It was a practical decision, she says. The nearest hotel was more than an hour from Mudlick Hollow, which is almost a four-hour drive from Lexington. It was important to film the children, who often got up at 5:30 or 6 a.m. And besides, like any decent Southern family, the Bowlings insisted.
Being around early in the day paid off in several instances. One was a particularly painful scene involving Clint, Iree's 18-year-old grandson, who telephones his fiancee, Shirley, on the morning of their wedding, only to be told that she has changed her mind. The camera follows Clint as he hangs up the phone, goes outside and, with fully understandable rage, tries to beat the wall of an outbuilding senseless. In the best and worst documentary tradition, the scene is fascinating and embarrassingly intrusive. But maybe being a Kennedy and growing up with cameras constantly following you, especially in times of sorrow, gives a filmmaker a different perspective.
''I think there's probably some sensitivity to what that means,'' says Ms. Kennedy. ''But, you know, I think that with documentaries it's really important for the people that you're filming to be open to it and to want to participate in the process.'' Even if it hurts.
One of Ms. Kennedy's influences was Barbara Kopple, who made the Oscar-winning documentary ''Harlan County U.S.A.,'' about Kentucky mine workers. But her decision to go into filmmaking had many facets. Anyone choosing a career should consider ''the impact it has in terms of things that you believe in and how much you like doing it,'' she says.
And how much does she enjoy making films? ''I love it,'' she says, beaming.
Sheila Nevins, the senior vice president who runs HBO's documentary division, says Ms. Kennedy has good reason to be proud of her work. ''She has a capacity for being an innocent listener, and it allows her films to have almost a childlike innocence,'' says Ms. Nevins, who watched ''American Hollow'' take shape, screening early footage in her office. ''It had something different, a serenity, and I didn't think it was particularly about poverty.''
As for that famous name and heritage, ultimately that disappears, Ms. Nevins says. ''When she works with you 16 hours, at 11 o'clock at night, without air-conditioning, Rory's not a Kennedy anymore,'' she says, clearly remembering a specific instance. ''When she gets rings under her eyes, she looks like any 30-year-old with rings under her eyes.''
The political power of documentaries aside, says Ms. Nevins, the narrative is what counts. ''She's a good storyteller,'' she says of Ms. Kennedy. ''One day maybe she'll tell her own story.''

Works[edit]





Bibliography[edit]

See also[edit]

References[edit]

  1. Jump up^ Oppenheimer, Jerry (1995). The Other Mrs. Kennedy : An Intimate and Revealing Look at the Hidden Life of Ethel Skakel Kennedy. St. Martin's Paperbacks. pp. 495–496. ISBN 978-0312956004.
  2. Jump up^ Mehren, Elizabeth (January 4, 1998). "Kennedy Family, Friends Say Farewell to Michael". Los Angeles Times.
  3. ^ Jump up to:a b Frey, Jennifer (July 21, 1999). "Rory: The Quiet Kennedy". Washingtonpost.com.
  4. ^ Jump up to:a b c Appleford, Steve (September 20, 2014). "Rory Kennedy recounts the 1975 fall of Saigon in new film".
  5. Jump up^ http://moxiefirecracker.com/about.php
  6. Jump up^ "Filmmaker Rory Kennedy To Appear In Sept. 13 Wittenberg Series Event". Wittenberg University. September 2001.
  7. Jump up^ Fine, Arlene (October 19, 2001). "Filmmaker Rory Kennedy focuses on social issues". Cleveland Jewish News.
  8. Jump up^ True Tales from the Global Crisis, Film Maker magazine
  9. Jump up^ Traister, Rebecca (March 24, 2004). "A harrowing, inspiringBoy's Life" Salon.com. Accessed August 25, 2009.
  10. ^ Jump up to:a b c Dancis, Bruce (June 15, 2007). "Rory Kennedy Reveals the Ghosts of Abu Ghraib". PopMatters.
  11. Jump up^ McNamara, Mary (August 18, 2008). "Review: 'Thank You, Mr. President: Helen Thomas at the White House' on HBO". The New York Times. Retrieved 1 July 2013.
  12. Jump up^ Academy Invites 134 to Membership | Press Release | The Academy
  13. Jump up^ Grove, Lloyd (Sep 14, 2010). "A Kennedy on the Fence". The Daily Beast. Retrieved 1 July 2013.
  14. Jump up^ Hale, Mike (September 15, 2010). "Fences Make Good Neighbors? This One Has Its Doubters". Retrieved 1 July2013.
  15. ^ Jump up to:a b Stanley, Alessandra (October 17, 2012). "Cheerfulness Amid Calamity". The New York Times. Retrieved 1 July2013.
  16. Jump up^ Stuever, Hank (October 11, 2012). "HBO's 'Ethel': A Kennedy daughter, born late, reaches into the vault of memories". The Washington Post. Retrieved 1 July 2013.
  17. Jump up^ Zibart, Eve. "Rory Kennedy on the Making of 'Ethel'". Boston Common.
  18. Jump up^ Jardine, Alexandra (May 7, 2014). "Greg Bell Signs with Backyard, Rory Kennedy Joins Nonfiction and More". Advertising Age.
  19. Jump up^ Pond, Steve (September 19, 2014). "Rory Kennedy: 'We Haven't Learned the Lessons From Vietnam'". TheWrap.
  20. Jump up^ "Last Days in Vietnam". The Oscars. Retrieved February 16, 2015.
  21. Jump up^ Paine, Chris (March 24, 2010). "Rory Kennedy delivers message of social justice to CARP fundraiser". Palm Beach Daily News.
  22. Jump up^ Stern, Marlow (September 1, 2014). "Rory Kennedy on 'Last Days in Vietnam,' the Parallels Between Vietnam and Iraq, and Ferguson". The Daily Beast.
  23. Jump up^ Kennedy, Rory (February 2, 2008). "Rory Kennedy: Two Fine Choices, One Clear Decision - Obama". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved August 25, 2009.
  24. Jump up^ http://artsfuse.org/127135/fuse-film-interview-rory-kennedy-defends-last-days-in-vietnam/
  25. ^ Jump up to:a b c d Gates, Anita (November 28, 1999). "TELEVISION/RADIO; A Filmmaker Now Known for Two Families". The New York Times.
  26. Jump up^ "Michael Kennedy laid to rest". CNN. January 3, 1998.
  27. Jump up^ "Rory Kennedy full of mixed emotions". USA Today. July 21, 1999.
  28. Jump up^ Beggy, Carol and Mark Shanahan, Mark (July 17, 2009). "Busy Moore Takes Time to Sing Local Costar's Praises". The Boston Globe. Accessed August 25, 2009.
  29. Jump up^ "A Kennedy Sells Park Slope Townhouse". Brownstoner. January 17, 2013.
  30. Jump up^ Donato, Nicki (December 17, 2009). "Rory Kennedy Sells Shelter Island Waterfront for Nearly $3 Million". Curbed Hamptons.
  31. Jump up^ Mann, Laura (December 16, 2009). "Rory Kennedy sells Shelter Island home for $2.967 million". Newsday.
  32. Jump up^ Malec, Brett (September 15, 2012). "Taylor Swift and Conor Kennedy Make Very Sweet Couple: I Love Her, Says Rory Kennedy".
  33. Jump up^ "Kerry Kennedy ate carrots, cappuccino, Ambien for breakfast on day of DWI arrest: testimony". New York Daily News. February 25, 2014.
  34. Jump up^ Sheftell, Jason (February 19, 2013). "Filmmaker Rory Kennedy, daughter of Robert F. Kennedy, buys $2.9 million home on Malibu's Point Dume". New York Daily News.
  35. Jump up^ Klein, Edward (2004). The Kennedy Curse: Why Tragedy Has Haunted America's First Family for 150 Years. St. Martin's Griffin. pp. 218–219. ISBN 978-0312312930.
  36. Jump up^ Hibbard, Andrew (January 14, 2010). "Full Frame to honor Garbus, Kennedy". The Chronicle.
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