Neighbor:

Rory Kennedy
Filmmaker

By Sabrina C. Mashburn

Film director and Shelter Islander Rory Kennedy is no stranger to the clash between politics and emotion, as both her own life experiences and those of the subjects of her films convey. From attacking tough issues, such as the tensions between spectators of New York City’s Puerto Rican Day Parade and residents of the neighborhoods it passes through, in I’m Boricua, Just So You Know! or following the mayoral campaign trail from an incumbent’s point of view in Street Fight, to Pandemic: Facing Aids, bringing the AIDS crisis closer to American viewers, and taking a harsh look at the death penalty in The Execution of Wanda Jean, Kennedy’s work has made her familiar with the often overlooked, human side of the American sociopolitical machine. As she once told her college newspaper, she uses media “to bring attention to the marginalized people.”

Her own life, which began with the assassination of her father, US Senator Robert F. Kennedy, six months before her birth, and the death of her cousin, John F. Kennedy, Jr., and his wife en route to Rory’s wedding, coupled with the premature deaths of two of her brothers, has been a testament to human perseverance and Rory’s own drive to succeed. A committed social activist and human rights advocate, Rory Kennedy has sat on the board of the Legal Action Center, the Project Return Foundation and the Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr., Foundation Associate Trustees Program. She was a member of the 1999 Presidential Mission on AIDS in Africa, and developed the Teacher Transfer Program between the U.S. and Namibia after her work at the Dobra Resettlement Camp. She also has been a member of the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Human Rights delegations in South Africa, South Korea, Japan, El Salvador and Poland. When she is not filming and helping people in far-away places, Rory and her family like to spend time on Shelter Island, dining with friends at the Vine Street Café and unwinding in one of the least political and least controversial places on earth — the Hamptons.

Although interested in the power of politics and the importance of philanthropy, Rory Kennedy’s most celebrated role is that of a filmmaker. After graduating from Brown University with a Bachelor’s degree in Women’s Studies, Rory set out on her journey to become one of the United States premier documentary filmmakers and, subsequently, one of the most influential women in film. Her first professional project, Pandemic: Facing AIDS, was produced for the Emmy and Peabody award-winning HBO special series “America Undercover” in 1993. This powerful documentary cemented her relationship with the network, whose popularity and cutting-edge image would allow Rory to showcase her more volatile films in a very public forum. In 1998, Rory Kennedy merged her production company, Moxie Films, with fellow Brown University alumnus Liz Garbus’ Firecracker Films to form Moxie Firecracker Films, Inc. In 1999, Rory and her husband, Mark Bailey, wrote a book entitled American Hollow, and later adapted it to the screen. Since then, she has produced and directed documentary films for HBO, PBS, Lifetime Television and A&E. Her films have been nominated for Academy Awards (Best Documentary Film, Street Fight) and the Sundance Film Festival’s Independent Spirit Award (American Hollow) and a Primetime Emmy Award (American Hollow). Her work has also won numerous awards, including the U.S. International Film and Video Festival’s CINE Golden Eagle and the National Educational Media Network’s Silver Apple for Fire in Our House.

Moxie Firecracker Films, Inc.’s latest release, Ghosts of Abu Ghraib, has won rave reviews from both audiences and critics at every film festival at which it has been presented. Ghosts of Abu Ghraib documents the 2003 Iraqi prison scandal and examines the policy decisions that contributed to the inhumane actions which were inflicted upon Iraqi prisoners by U.S. soldiers. In the making of this film, Rory Kennedy showed her typical fearlessness as she interviewed witnesses, perpetrators and victims of these atrocious crimes in order to uncover how such a tragedy could have occurred under the supposedly democratic eyes of the United States military. The film references the 1961 Yale University experiment that tried to uncover the secret behind the Nazi’s unrelenting willingness to follow orders, in which students were made to believe that they were administering electric shock “punishments” to other students when they answered questions incorrectly, sometimes administering lethal shocks when instructed to do so by the experiment moderator. And just as psychologist Stanley Milgram tried to examine how Nazi soldiers could torture and kill other human beings under orders, Rory Kennedy uses her power as a filmmaker to delve deep into the psychological processes that allowed these young American soldiers to stifle compassion and eventually torture and kill their prisoners by complying with what they thought to be unquestionable orders.

She begins her argument by explaining how and why the United States decided to ignore the standards of the Geneva Convention of 1948 that put forth how prisoners of war must be treated, and traces the United States Military’s recent history of systematic torture and abuse of prisoners in the name of intelligence gathering. She tries as only an expert documentary filmmaker can to unveil how an administration forced 300 young guards to control 6,000 prisoners, under the guidance of superiors who instructed them to go as far as possible without causing “organ failure or death,” and who treated even those basic guidelines as insignificant suggestions, often ignoring one if not both. While the superior officers who ordered the torture are not depicted in the film, as none of them were punished for their actions, Kennedy interviews the youngest, lowest-ranking soldiers who were forced to carry out these unspeakable acts and then forced to pay the price for them once their offenses were made public. Coupled with testimony from former prisoners and the family members of those who lost their lives within the walls of Abu Ghraib during the 2003 US Military inquisitions, Kennedy creates a chilling picture of the new face of the United States military and its war on terror.

During this year, before the next presidential election, this film emerges as a lingering reminder of how the current administration has marred the United States formerly spotless reputation in the eyes of the rest of the developed world.

Rory Kennedy’s latest documentary film, Ghosts of Abu Ghraib, will air on HBO on Thursday, February 22 at 9:30 p.m. and again on Friday at 4:35 a.m. and Tuesday, February 27 at 12:15 a.m.