Photo: From Charles Guggenheim's Robert Kennedy Remembered. Courtesy of Silverdocs.

On the occasion of the 40th anniversary of Robert F. Kennedy’s death this month, Silverdocs will be presenting a special program, screening the late Charles Guggenheim’s Academy Award-winning short, Robert Kennedy Remembered, as well as TV spots that Guggenheim created for Kennedy’s 1968 US Presidential campaign. Also included on the program will be a panel with filmmaker George Stevens JR., who introduced Guggenheim to Kennedy; Frank Mankiewicz, Kennedy’s press secretary; and Guggenheim’s daughter, Grace Guggenheim.

"Documentary has the ability to frame history, the moving images become our collective memory,” said Silverdocs Director Patricia Finneran in a statement. “In this historic election year, it is appropriate to look back at 1968 and examine how documentary film informed our understanding and influenced politics, then and now. Charles Guggenheim's film about Robert Kennedy captures the extraordinary spirit of the man and, when seen in context, the complex passions tragedies, hopes and fears of that pivotal year." 

The documentary canon on RFK beyond Guggenheim’s work is relatively slim. David Grubin, the go-to guy for docs about US presidents and presidential candidates, made RFK, a two-parter for PBS’ American Experience in 2004. Mel Stuart made The Unfinished Journey of Robert Kennedy (1970), which aired on network TV, and he documented RFK’s ill-fated campaign for The Making of the President 1968. Two films, out this year, examine the assassination itself and the controversy surrounding it: Mark Sobel’s RFK and Shane O’Sullivan’s RFK Must Die: The Assassination of Bobby Kennedy RFK Must Die: The Assassination of Bobby Kennedy.