Two award-winning documentary filmmakers will screen one of their recent projects and speak to Brigham Young University students on Monday (Dec. 8).
Rory Kennedy and Liz Garbus will show their documentary "A Boy's Life," and discuss their philosophy of field work and social documentation at 1:30 p.m. in Room 205 of the J. Reuben Clark Law School on the BYU campus. The screening will be followed by a question-and-answer session. The public is welcome to attend.
"This is an amazing opportunity for students to meet professional filmmakers of this caliber. Kennedy and Garbus produce films which I believe complement BYU's goals of social and moral investigation and activism," says April Chabries, a BYU assistant professor of theater and media arts.
Co-founders of the production company Moxie Firecracker Films, Kennedy and Garbus make films that illuminate larger social issues by telling the stories of everyday people.
"A Boy's Life," which is scheduled to air on HBO in 2004, tells the story of a young Mississippi boy and his family's attempts to deal with his increasing violent and disturbing behavior. It describes the family's struggle and the impact of a teacher and a social worker on the life of a troubled child.
Both graduates of Brown University, Kennedy and Garbus have distinguished themselves as filmmakers and as activists.
Kennedy has made numerous social issue films that chronicle her personal interests and the legacy of her father, Sen. Robert Kennedy, including the global AIDS crisis, human rights, domestic abuse, poverty and addiction. Her film, American Hollow, premiered at the 1999 Sundance Film Festival and garnered both an Independent Spirit Award nomination and a Non-Fiction Primetime Emmy nomination.
An Emmy-award winning filmmaker and fellow of the Soros Foundation's Center on Crime, Communities and Culture, Garbus has produced documentaries on the U.S. legal system, the entertainment industry, marriage, prostitution, and violent criminals. Her 1998 documentary, "The FARM: Angola, USA," a look inside America's most notorious maximum-security prison, was nominated for an Academy Award, and won two Emmys and the Sundance Grand Jury Prize.
Kennedy and Garbus have produced and directed more than a dozen documentaries for networks including HBO, Lifetime Television, A&E, Court TV, TLC, MTV and Oxygen.
