Director, 'Last Days of Vietnam'
PROFILE
Rory Kennedy
Guest
FROM Rory Kennedy
Press Play with Madeleine Brand
‘Above and Beyond’ celebrates NASA’s 60th anniversary In 1962, John F. Kennedy tried getting Americans to support NASA’s moon mission. NASA was only four years old at the time. The agency succeedd in getting astronauts to the moon, but what’s overlooked about the historic achievement is that from the moon, we were able to study earth like never before. JFK’s niece is sharing what NASA has learned about Earth in a new film called “Above and Beyond: NASA’s Journey to Tomorrow.”
Press Play with Madeleine Brand
New documentary chases Laird Hamilton, big wave chaser Documentary filmmaker Rory Kennedy has made films about Vietnam, Abu Ghraib, AIDS, and other topics. Now she’s made something completely different: a documentary about a surfer. But not just any surfer — her latest is about world-famous big wave surfer Laird Hamilton. Hamilton is famous for pioneering the sport of surfing massive waves, some as tall as 100 feet. The film spotlights his sometimes tumultuous upbringing in Hawaii, his love of the ocean, and his “fear defect,” what drives him to chase monster waves all over the world. The film is called “ Take Every Wave: The Life of Laird Hamilton .”
Press Play with Madeleine Brand
'Last Days in Vietnam' When American troops were leaving Vietnam in 1975, several mobs of soldiers and South Vietnamese scrambled to get out of Saigon. Amid the chaos, U.S. soldiers had to decide who was going to be left behind. Filmmaker Rory Kennedy tries to make sense of the confusion and mayhem in her Oscar-nominated documentary Last Days in Vietnam.
Press Play with Madeleine Brand
“Last Days in Vietnam” There’s an iconic picture that symbolizes the end of the Vietnam War: A helicopter sits on the roof of what most people believe is the U.S. Embassy in Saigon. A long line of people stand on a ladder leading to the roof and a man reaches out to help the first of them aboard. In fact, the image is of an apartment building that housed senior CIA employees. The confusion is a good metaphor for the war, and the chaos as the North Vietnamese rolled towards Saigon after the war officially ended. The new documentary Last Days in Vietnam tries to clarify some of what happened as America scrambled to evacuate the country. We speak to director Rory Kennedy as part of a weeklong series of interviews with the filmmakers behind this year’s Oscar-nominated documentaries.
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Scheer Intelligence
The Biggest Threat to Free Speech No One Is Talking About FAIR co-founder Jeff Cohen dissects the midterm elections, the failures of the mainstream media and the future of the Democratic Party.
Press Play with Madeleine Brand
Should we keep rebuilding in fire-prone Malibu? Private firefighters successfully defended Kim Kardashian and Kanye West’s $50 million mansion from the Woolsey Fire. Insurance companies with a lot at stake have recently started hiring private wildfire defense teams to protect their clients’ properties.
LA Observed
Where the fire started, a checkered past The Woolsey Fire continues to rage at a little more than a third containment today. Areas in, and north and west of, Malibu are feeling the brunt of the impact. But across the Ventura County Line, headed past Point Mugu, and toward Oxnard, is a plot of land that has a lot of history. And controversy. With fires burning inside the grounds of the former Rocketdyne Field Lab, some folks who live nearby are worried.
The Organist
The New World Where do speech balloons come from? How does time move from panel to panel? This week we explore the techniques of comic-book storytelling through Chris Reynolds’s graphic series, newly anthologized as The New World. Join us as we travel deep into the artist’s world to find the source of these bizarrely mundane comics’ depth and beauty.