President to Remember, A

In the early 1960s, Robert Drew was one of the pioneers of American direct cinema. With lightweight recording equipment that he and his associates in part designed themselves, Drew could follow his subjects from close up. The first subject that he chose garnered instant success: John F. Kennedy's bid for the Presidency in 1960. Drew and his crew got unprecedented access to Kennedy's campaign, with the now classic documentary Primary as the result. The collaboration with Kennedy was then continued in Adventures on the New Frontier, an intimate look at the early presidency, and Crisis, about the conflict with George Wallace, the Governor of Alabama who barred black students from the state university. Their working relationship ended with Kennedy's assassination in 1963, which Drew reflected upon in Faces of November. Based on material shot for all four of these films, supplemented by archive footage primarily from Kennedy's speeches, Drew has now compiled A President to Remember. Intermittently narrated by Alec Baldwin, Drew reveals the highpoints of the four-year Kennedy presidency. But the film isn't just a "greatest hits"; Drew has a new point to make. He is putting this celebrated former president on display for the explicit purpose of contrasting his behaviour with that of his successors. (International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam)