Biography
Robert Kenner is an American screenwriter, director, and producer for film and television.
He began his career in 1971 as an assistant cinematographer and produced his first film, 3:15 - The Moment of Truth, in 1984 (released in 1986). His second feature, Lonely Hearts, was released in 1991.
Kenner's breakthrough came with the documentary The Lost Fleet of Guadalcanal, produced for the National Geographic Society and aired on PBS in 1993. In 1994, he directed and produced Russia's Last Tsar for National Geographic and PBS, followed by America's Endangered Species: Don't Say Good-bye in 1996, which earned the Strand Award for Best Documentary from the International Documentary Association.
Starting in 1998, Kenner developed a long-standing relationship with PBS's American Experience. That year, he directed and produced Influenza, 1918, about the 1918 flu pandemic, and in 2001, John Brown's Holy War, about abolitionist John Brown. His first documentary that he wrote, directed, and produced was War Letters, which aired on American Experience in 2001, based on historian Andrew Carroll's New York Times bestseller War Letters: Extraordinary Correspondence from American Wars. He also produced "The Road to Memphis" for the 2003 PBS series The Blues and directed and produced Two Days in October in 2005, a Vietnam War documentary premiering the season of American Experience. Based on David Maraniss' book They Marched into Sunlight, it explores the parallel events of a Viet Cong ambush and a violent protest at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in October 1967. The film won the Emmy Award for Exceptional Merit in Nonfiction Filmmaking in 2006.
In 2008, Kenner produced and directed Food, Inc., a documentary investigating industrial agriculture in the United States, highlighting how mass food production results in inexpensive but environmentally damaging and unhealthy products.
This summary is adapted from the Wikipedia article on Robert Kenner, licensed under CC-BY-SA.
5 wins and 13 nominations
