Award-winning documentary filmmaker Rory Kennedy will appear on the Brenau Gainesville campus Thursday, March 27, for meetings with students and screening of one of her films, and lecture. The event, open to the public and free of charge, will be at 6 p.m. in historic Pearce Auditorium on Centennial Circle.

Her topic for the Pearce Auditorium presentation is entitled "The Camera Doesn't Lie: Social Change through Documentary Filmmaking." There will be a light desert reception afterwards in the Simmons Visual Arts Gallery adjacent to Pearce Auditorium.

On Monday, March 24, at 6 p.m., students and the public will be able to see some of her work - one episode of a five-part TV series about the AIDS pandemic, a segment focusing on the devastation of the disease in Uganda. There is no admission for the screening, which will be in Thurmond-McRae Auditorium adjacent to the Trustee Library on Academy Street.

Kennedy attracted attention, critical acclaim and criticism last year with the production of a film about the notorious prison in Iraq where U.S. personnel were accused of torture and other abuses of prisoners. In "Ghosts of Abu Ghraib," she featured interviews with prisoners, court-martialed abusers, witnesses of the abuse, military personnel and legal experts, among others. However, much of her other work deals with social issues, particularly issues related to women and those in the South, including her breakthrough 1999 film, "America Hollow," about a struggling Appalachian family.

Kennedy is the youngest of 11 children of former Attorney General and U.S. Sen. Robert Kennedy and his wife, Ethel. She was born six month after her father was assassinated 40 years ago on the night he secured enough primary delegates to virtually assure him the Democratic presidential nomination. In addition to the usual media attention that a member of the famous clan of President J. F. Kennedy attracts, Rory Kennedy gets an extra dose because it was her wedding to which the slain president´s son, John F. Kennedy Jr., and his wife, Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, were traveling when they died in a plane crash.

"As a member of one of the most media-hounded families in history, Rory Kennedy made her own mark by using the power of the media not as a tool to promote anybody´s celebrity status but as a means of calling attention to marginalized people and important issues," said Heather Casey, director of the Women´s Center at Brenau University, co-sponsor of the event.

Other financial support for Kennedy´s Brenau appearance came from Gainesville lawyer Wyc Orr and his wife, Lyn, who funded the Aileen Grace and Emogene Gaskins Women´s Studies Endowment in honor of their mothers. The Kennedy lecture marks the first time proceeds from the endowment have been used.

"On behalf of our mothers, who were such strong and independent women, we are pleased to be part of Ms. Kennedy´s appearance at Brenau," says Wyc Orr. "We have long admired the Kennedys, who inspired us as teenagers and beyond, and Rory Kennedy has continued her family´s tradition of promoting the highest aspirations of our nation and world."

Coincidentally, the Orrs´ daughter and law partner, Kris Orr Brown, while a student at Boston University, worked for Rory Kennedy´s eldest brother, former U.S. Rep. Joseph Kennedy, D-Mass.

Rory Kennedy graduated from Brown University and cofounded Moxie Firecracker Films. With more than 20 films to her credit, Kennedy is one of the nation's most prolific independent documentary filmmakers, focusing on issues such as poverty, domestic abuse, human rights and AIDS. Her work includes the unsettling "Indian Point: Imagining the Unimaginable," which examines the potential for a nuclear disaster in New York City's backyard, and "Pandemic: Facing AIDS," a five-part series - nominated for two primetime Emmy Awards - that follows the lives of people living with AIDS throughout the world. She executive produced "Street Fight," which was nominated for an Academy Award® for documentary feature in 2006.

Kennedy also advocates for several social activism organizations and sits on the board of numerous non-profit organizations. And recently she made news with an editorial endorsement of U.S. Senator Barack Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination - seen by some as dramatic turnaround since earlier she had planned to make a documentary about Obama´s chief rival, U.S. Senator Hillary Clinton.

"Times are far too dark, the price of failure too steep and the road ahead too perilous for us to vote on identity politics," she wrote, very much echoing the oratory of her famous father and uncle. "I would love to see a woman be president. I would love to see an African American be president. But right now, what I would love most is to elect the best person for the job."