A President to Remember: In the Company of JFK

2008, 75 mins

Credits

Robert Drew

Director - Writer

Anne Drew

Producer

Richard Leacock

Photographer - Editor

D.A. Pennebaker

Photographer - Editor

Albert Maysles

Photographer - Editor

Terence Macartney-Filgate

Photographer - Editor

Jacqueline Kennedy

Herself

John F. Kennedy

Himself

Hubert H. Humphrey

Himself

Eunice Kennedy Shriver

Herself

Ethel Kennedy

Herself

Robert F. Kennedy

Himself

Harry S. Truman

Himself

Lyndon Johnson

Himself

Richard Nixon

Himself

John J. McCloy

Himself

Walter H. Heller

Himself

Nikita Khrushchev

Himself

Fidel Castro

Himself

John Diefenbaker

Himself

Charles de Gaulle

Himself

Pau Casals

Himself

Andrei Gromyko

Himself

May Craig

Herself

George Wallace

Himself

Larry O'Brien

Himself

Vivian Malone

Herself

Nicholas Katzenbach

Himself

Kerry Kennedy

Herself

Henry Graham

Himself

Alec Baldwin

Narrator

"The fact that this film is so powerful almost 50 years after the assassination is the mark of the influence Drew’s images have had over time"

Oksana Dykyj, Educational Media Reviews Online

Narrated by Alec Baldwin, A PRESIDENT TO REMEMBER (2008) offers a fresh look at JFK’s life by interweaving four of Robert Drew’s critically acclaimed films on the 35th president, as well as other archival footage from the period. Intimate footage from PRIMARY, ADVENTURES ON THE NEW FRONTIER, CRISIS: BEHIND A PRESIDENTIAL COMMITMENT, and FACES OF NOVEMBER takes viewers through the several stages of Kennedy’s career, from the Wisconsin campaign trail to the Oval Office to the tears of a grieving nation.

Capturing JFK with unprecedented intimacy and candor, A PRESIDENT TO REMEMBER is a tribute to one of the most beloved leaders in American history.

Robert Drew said he created the film from the realization that young people in 2008 did not know what it was like to have a president who is celebrated both within the country and around the globe. “We’ve had generations that have never known a lively, active president who was well-regarded. I had this great footage, and it occurred to me to put it together to inform later generations about a president they never knew and that they should know about,” Drew said in an interview with HBO on the making of the film.

The film, produced by Anne Drew and directed by Bob, was an official selection at the 2008 Tribeca Film Festival and the International Documentary Film Festival in Amsterdam. It was broadcast by HBO in 2011, on the 50th anniversary of JFK’s inauguration.

“The re-editing of all the original footage affords a new way of looking at the events of the Kennedy presidency and Drew’s decisions make for an incredibly powerful and moving film even though we are by now completely familiar with the imagery,” wrote Oksana Dykyj, head of Visual Media Resources at Concordia University, Montreal, in her review for Educational Media Reviews Online.

“This is truly a new kind of history in images and sound,” wrote Ron Sutton in Documentary.org’s review of the film.

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