Hunter Profs’ Documentary to Air on PBS on August 22

A widely praised documentary produced and directed by two Hunter film & media professors, Larry Shore and Tami Gold, will air nationally on PBS on August 22. (Check local listings.) It is RFK in the Land of Apartheid: A Ripple of Hope, which uses never before seen footage and interviews to tell the story of Robert F. Kennedy’s visit to South Africa in 1966 during the worse years of the apartheid regime. A highlight of the film is a speech delivered by Kennedy in Cape Town from which the phrase “ripple of hope” comes. The entire speech passage is now engraved on Kennedy’s tombstone in Arlington National Cemetery.

Professor Shore’s participation in the documentary involves a unique personal history. He was teenager in South Africa at the time of RFK’s speech, and he never forgot its inspiring message of hope and courage. When he immigrated to the U.S. years later, he was surprised to discover few Americans knew about the trip, since it received scant press coverage here. Determined to tell the story, Shore returned to South Africa to collect archival footage, then collaborated with Professor Gold on the 55-minute film. He produced, and they co-directed.

Ripple of Hope has received strong critical praise. Huffington Post hailed it as “brilliant,” the Boston Globe called it a “marvelous documentary” and former New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis said, “This film has an intense emotional impact.”