Rory Kennedy | |
|---|---|
 Kennedy in 2011 | |
| Born | Rory Elizabeth Katherine Kennedy (1968-12-12)December 12, 1968 (age 57) Washington, D.C., U.S. |
| Education | Brown University (BA) |
| Occupation | Documentaryfilmmaker |
| Years active | 1990–present |
| Spouse | |
| Children | 3 |
| Parent(s) | Robert F. Kennedy Ethel Skakel |
| Family | Kennedy family |
Rory Elizabeth Katherine Kennedy (born December 12, 1968)[1] is an American documentary filmmaker. Kennedy has made documentary films that center on social issues such asaddiction, heropposition to nuclear power, the treatment ofprisoners-of-war, and the politics of theMexican border fence.
She is the youngest child of U.S. SenatorRobert F. Kennedy andEthel Kennedy.
_-_Rory_Kennedy_(1).jpg)
Rory Elizabeth Katherine Kennedy was born on December 12, 1968, atGeorgetown University Hospital inWashington, D.C., to parentsRobert F. Kennedy, a formerUnited States Attorney General, U.S. Senator, and1968 U.S. presidential candidate, and his wifeEthel Kennedy. She was bornsix months after herfather was shot and killed. She is the youngest grandchild ofJoseph P. Kennedy Sr. andRose Kennedy. Her mother chose her name "Rory" after the lasthigh king of Ireland,Rory O'Connor, who ruled in the 12th century.
On December 19, 1968, a week after Rory was born, her mother took her to her father's grave atArlington National Cemetery.[2] Kennedy's older brotherMichael LeMoyne Kennedy was assigned as her godparent by their mother. In December 1997, she tried to resuscitate her brother Michael after a skiing accident in Aspen, Colorado, which was fatal.[3] Friends of the Kennedy family said Rory and Michael spoke almost every day of their lives.[4]
When Rory was a teenager, she was arrested during a protest outside the South African Embassy. When she was 15, her 28-year-old brother David died from adrug overdose. Rory graduated fromMadeira School inMcLean, Virginia, and thenBrown University inProvidence, Rhode Island. During her sophomore year at Brown, Rory organized a rally in front of a Providence supermarket. In solidarity with migrant farm workers, she urged shoppers to boycott grapes.[5]
In the 1990s, Kennedy and fellow Brown classmate Vanessa Vadim (daughter ofRoger Vadim andJane 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 about female addicts that she wrote while a student at Brown.[6] In 1998, Kennedy and another fellow Brown graduateLiz Garbus founded Moxie Firecracker Films, which specializes in documentaries that highlight pressingsocial issues.[7] The television networks that have shown its films include:A&E, the UK'sChannel 4,Court TV,Discovery Channel,HBO,Lifetime, MTV,Oxygen,PBS,Sundance Channel, andTLC.
She directed and co-producedAmerican Hollow (1999), a film about a strugglingAppalachian family that received critical acclaim and many awards. HBO broadcast the film andpublisherLittle, Brown and Company simultaneously released Kennedy's companion book. Kennedy presented the documentary at Wittenberg University on September 13, 2001.[8]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 companyChange the World Through Film.[9]
Kennedy directed and co-produced theEmmy Award-nominated seriesPandemic: Facing AIDS (2003), which premiered at theInternational AIDS Conference inBarcelona, Spain, on July 8, 2002. It was funded by theBill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and tells the stories ofAIDS patients outside the Western world. It was broadcast in America as a five-part series on HBO in June 2003.[10] Kennedy directed and co-producedA Boy's Life (2004), the story of a young boy and his family in ruralMississippi. The movie premiered at the 2003Tribeca Film Festival and was awarded the Best Documentary prize at theWoodstock Film Festival; it was later broadcast onHBO.
When Kennedy was asked in a March 24, 2004, interview withSalon about her interest in theAmerican South, she cited her father's experiences in the region as an inspiration and starting point.[11] In the same article, she goes on to mention that showing class differences in American culture also motivates her. She directed and co-producedIndian Point: Imagining the Unimaginable (2004) for HBO, which was broadcast on September 9, 2004. The film takes a "what if" look at the catastrophic consequences of aradioactive release at theIndian Point Energy Center, a three-unitnuclear-power plant station, located 35 miles (56 km) north ofmidtown Manhattan, New York City, New York. Kennedy directed and co-producedHomestead Strike (2006) as part ofThe History Channel's series,10 Days that Unexpectedly Changed America (April 2006).
She was a co-executive producer forStreet Fight (2005), which chronicles the 2002Newark, New Jersey, unsuccessful mayoral campaign ofDemocraticCory Booker — then aNewark Municipal Councilman — against Democratic eighteen-yearincumbentMayorSharpe James. The film earned anAcademy Award nomination forBest Documentary (Feature). (Booker later won the mayoral election on May 9, 2006, against DemocraticRonald Rice; James did not seek re-election for another four-year term in 2006.)
Kennedy directed and co-producedGhosts of Abu Ghraib (2007), which premiered at theSundance Film Festival and won the 2007 Primetime Emmy Award for Best Documentary. Kennedy first learned of theAbu Ghraib prison practices when images came out in the media, which were accompanied by aNew 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, when she began feeling they "were very humane and very much like me" and discovered they "were not monsters."[12] She directedThank You, Mr. President: Helen Thomas at the White House for HBO Documentary Films, which premiered on HBO on August 18, 2008. According to reviews, the 40-minute-long documentary provided an interesting, though brief, glimpse into the iconic journalist.[13]
.jpg)
On June 30, 2009, Kennedy was invited to join theAcademy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.[14] Kennedy directedThe 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.[15][16] In 2011, she produced and directedEthel, which was a documentary about her mother. The movie premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival and aired on HBO on October 18, 2012.[17] Reviews portrayed the documentary as a moving tribute, but criticized its lack of depth.[17][18] 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.[19]
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".[6] Kennedy was reported to have signed with production company Nonfiction Unlimited in May 2014.[20] In September 2014,Last Days in Vietnam opened at the Nuart Theater in Los Angeles.[6] Kennedy had difficulty getting some of the people featured in her film to get involved. Out of them, she believedHenry 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."[21]Last Days in Vietnam was nominated asBest Documentary Feature for the87th Academy Awards.[22]
In 2024, Kennedy directed and producedThe Synanon Fix a documentary series revolving aroundSynanon for HBO.[23] In early 2024, Film Training Manitoba based in Winnipeg, Canada announced Kennedy as the distinguished speaker for the Manitoba Film Master Series which took place at the Manitoba Institute of Trades and Technology (MITT). The Film Master Series included a session with Kennedy instructing specifically for women, non-binary, and Trans participants.[24] In 2025, Kennedy directed and producedThe Trial of Alec Baldwin which will have its world premiere atDOC NYC in November 2025, revolving aroundAlec Baldwin and theRust shooting incident.[25][26]
Kennedy advocates for several social activism organizations and sits on the board of numerous non-profit organizations.[27] 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."[28] Referring to theshooting 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."[29]
Kennedy announced her support ofBarack Obama as theDemocratic Party's nominee in the2008 U.S. presidential election in anop-ed essay, "Two fine choices, one clear decision - Obama".[30] She endorsed Democratic presidential nomineeHillary Clinton in 2016.[31]
On January 11, 2019, Kennedy co-authored aRolling Stone opinion piece withRed Hot Chili Peppers singerAnthony Kiedis and the Malibu Foundation's Trevor Neilson on the currentclimate crisis.[32] Also in 2019, Kennedy co-founded theClimate Emergency Fund along withGetty family heiressAileen Getty. The fund has distributed over $4 million to several environmental activist organizations includingExtinction Rebellion andJust Stop Oil.[33]
On April 1, 2024, during an appearance onGood Morning America to promote her new docuseries,The Synanon Fix, Kennedy expressed her wish that voters in the2024 United States presidential election not vote for her brother,Robert F. Kennedy Jr., to avoid pulling Democratic votes away fromJoe Biden.[34] She endorsed Biden's candidacy, making the announcement in April 2024 alongside five additional siblings of her and Robert.[35]
After Bidendropped out, Kennedy endorsed Vice PresidentKamala Harris'scampaign, after their siblings denounced her brother Robert Jr.'s decision to endorse former PresidentDonald Trump, calling the move a "betrayal".[36]
"Because he was killed before I was born, it meant I never had the chance to see my father’s face and he never had the chance to see mine. He never tossed me in the air, taught me to ride a bicycle, dropped me off at my freshman dorm, walked me down the aisle."
Following college graduation, Kennedy moved to New York and then briefly to Los Angeles.[38]Kennedy's brotherMichael 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 himmouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Despite her efforts, he had been fatally injured.[5] Kennedy attended his funeral in January 1998.[39]
On August 2, 1999, Kennedy marriedMark Bailey in Greece at the mansion of shipping tycoonVardis Vardinoyiannis. Kennedy met Bailey in Washington through mutual friends after graduating from Brown University.[38] The wedding was originally scheduled for July 17 inHyannis Port, Massachusetts, but was postponed after the plane piloted by her cousinJohn F. Kennedy Jr. and passengersCarolyn Bessette-Kennedy (his wife) and her sister, Lauren Bessettecrashed en route to the event. The tent erected for the wedding instead became a site for family prayers during the search for her family members.[40]
In October 1999, Kennedy and her husband moved to a new home in a West Village neighborhood they reportedly loved.[38]
Kennedy and her husband have two daughters and a son.[41]
Around the time of the birth of her second daughter in 2004, Kennedy and her husband purchased a home.[42] Kennedy went on maternity leave from her filmmaking career for the birth of her son in 2007.[12] She sold her Shelter Island home in December 2009.[43][44]
According to Trulia.com, Kennedy purchased a home inMalibu, California, in January 2013 and currently resides there.[45]
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 ofThe New York Times wrote that Kennedy would understandably want to be known as "the one who became a filmmaker."[38]
Edward Klein wrote in his bookThe 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.[46]
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."[12] 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".[47]
Documentary filmography (as director)[edit]
| Documentary filmography (as producer)[edit]
|
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)rory.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Artists | |
| Other | |
