Ram NK retweetledi
I just heard the news that Robert Redford has passed.
“Bob” as he insisted I call him was a dear friend and mentor when I started Participant Media in 2004.
We initially began with Bob as the narrator of a series we did on social entrepreneurs called “The New Heroes” that aired on PBS in 2005.
From there, we struck up a friendship and I invited Bob and his production company to share our office space at Participant, as we had extra office space and he was looking for new space to house his group. He and his team were with us in our offices for a few years, starting in 2005.
It was a very special time.
Every day around 5pm, Bob would come by my office and we would sit and talk about movies and life, usually punctuated by incredible stories that Bob would tell me…often an hour or more that had me amazed by his life and stories of the film world in days past.
I continued to see Bob regularly at Sundance in the years that followed, ended only by the Covid era and my own health challenges.
Bob even attended the Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship in Oxford circa 2006, when we also hosted Sir Ben Kingsley who had kindly helped support the Gandhi Project, an effort that we started in 2004 to dub the film Gandhi into Arabic for the first time and also show it in theaters and schools in Gaza and the West Bank as a peace building initiative. Ironically, we were kicked out of Gaza by Hamas in 2006, but the film continued to be shown in the West Bank for many years.
Bob graciously shared the stage with Sir Ben and even took photos with our Skoll Foundation Social Entrepreneur Awardees that year.
Today we have lost not only an American icon, but also a fascinating human being who was both relatable and very down to earth, despite being a world renowned movie star.
Bob cared about the environment, the arts and the impact that the arts could have in the world.
He was one of a kind and I for one will miss him greatly.
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