Rory Kennedy

Award-winning producer, director, and writer, Rory Kennedy is co-founder of Moxie Firecracker Films, an independent documentary production company that she runs with partner Liz Garbus. Kennedy has produced and/or directed award-winning documentaries for HBO, Lifetime Television, A&E, Court TV, The Oxygen Network and The Learning Channel, covering a variety of topics including the global AIDS crisis, human rights, domestic abuse, poverty, and drug addiction.

In 1999, Kennedy's film American Hollow brought her filmmaking to the attention of critics and the viewing public. The story of a tight-knit Appalachian family caught between century-old tradition and the encroaching modern world, American Hollow premiered at the 1999 Sundance Film Festival. Subsequently, it won Best Documentary prizes at a number of festivals, including the American Film Institute and The 1999 Chicago International Film Festival, also garnering an Independent Spirit Award nomination. After its critically acclaimed run at New York City's Film Forum, HBO broadcast the film as part of the America Undercover series, it was nominated for a Non-Fiction Primetime Emmy Award. Additionally, Little, Brown & Co. published Kennedy's companion book, American Hollow, in conjunction with the film's broadcast premier.

The film also generated an "American Hollow" cultural exhibit, featuring the photographs of Steve Lehman, and has been shown at numerous museums, including The National Gallery of Art, The Dayton Art Institute, and The Norton Museum in Palm Beach. Elements from the book and exhibit have been combined and posted on The Washington Post website's electronic gallery.

Kennedy most recently directed and produced, Pandemic: Facing AIDS, which premiered at the Barcelona World AIDS conference on July 8, 2002. Pandemic follows the lives of five people living with AIDS in different regions of the world and uses their experiences to put faces behind the numbers and to connect audiences with the heartache and triumph of living under the extreme conditions that AIDS enforces. The film is accompanied by a book, cd, website, traveling exhibition, and educational material.