Robert Gardner

Over a career that spans thirty years, documentary film producer, director and writer Robert Gardner has been nominated for an Academy Award, won three National Emmy Awards, four regional Emmys, a duPont Columbia award, from Columbia University for excellence in broadcast journalism and a variety of special awards. His production company, Gardner Films has served both commercial and public television for fifteen years. He is a member of the Director's Guild and the Writer's Guild of America.

Gardner's best work celebrates the great variety emerging now in documentary storytelling; in science, history, adventure or human issues. He is never limited by form, but continues to experiment as the documentary continues to evolve. His commercial documentaries include extensive period re-enactments and complex location production, utilizing robotic jib work, Steadicam and extreme slow-motion. High production values are a hallmark.

He is currently in production on a one-hour documentary biography of Nobel Prize winning author Elie Wiesel for PBS and has just completed a three-hour documentary film series for PBS and Devillier Donegan Enterprises called Islam, Empire and Faith. The series was shot on super -16mm film in Tunisia, Egypt, Israel, Syria, Spain, Turkey and Iran and included costumed re-enactments produced with an Iranian feature film company. The re-enactments were produced with a production crew of 50, stunt coordinator and stunt riders, special effects team for fire and explosions, a full costume and make-up department and more than 100 extras.

Recent work includes two one-hour episodes of the Discovery Channel's highly rated forensic science series The New Detectives , two one-hour episodes of The FBI Files, also on the Discovery Channel. These productions, for New Dominion Pictures, were shot on Beta-SP videotape, included extensive re-enactments of crime and investigation scenes, shot on sound stages and on the actual locations of crimes as well. He also produced and directed an episode of the PBS premier science series NOVA, shot on location in Antarctica.

Other recent work includes two one-hour episodes of Time Life Television's documentary series Lost Civilizations, produced for NBC's entertainment division and broadcast on NBC in June, 1995.

His two programs Egypt; Quest for Immortality and Mesopotamia; Return to Eden were shot on location in Egypt, Iraq, Israel and Bahrain. The series won a Prime Time Emmy in 1996, represented by Egypt; Quest for Immortality. Re-enactments for these films included the discovery and opening of King Tut's tomb in Egypt, the discovery of the Rosetta Stone, the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the interior of an Assyrian tomb (complete with live rats). Mr. Gardner has also worked in Bolivia, Ethiopia, Egypt and Israel and France on a variety of assignments for National Geographic Television .