Robert Edwards
Robert Edwards is a writer and filmmaker based in New York City. Edwards graduated with a BA in history magna cum laude from Lafayette College, where he won the Gilbert Prize in English and the MacKnight Black Poetry Prize. He then served for six and a half years as an infantry and military intelligence officer in the US Army, and was a captain in the 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 82nd Airborne Division in Iraq during the Persian Gulf War.
After leaving the Army, Edwards earned an MA from the Graduate Program in Documentary Film and Video at Stanford. As a filmmaker, he wrote and directed the feature films Land of the Blind (2006) and When I Live My Life Over Again (aka One More Time) (2016), starring Christopher Walken and Amber Heard. As a screenwriter, Edwards won a Nicholl Fellowship from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for Land of the Blind, and a Sloan Foundation / Sundance Grant for his adaptation of American Prometheus. His other screenwriting work includes Black Mass, Olympus Has Fallen, One Minute to Midnight, Blackwater, Hello to All That, and House of War.
As a documentarian, Edwards works with his wife and partner, director/ cinematographer Ferne Pearlstein. Edwards co-wrote, co-produced, and co-edited Pearlstein’s feature documentary Sumo East and West (2003), and co-wrote and co-produced her new film The Last Laugh (2016), starring Mel Brooks and Sarah Silverman. Both films had their world premieres at the Tribeca Film Festival and aired nationally on PBS’s Independent Lens series. Edwards’s own documentary short The Voice of the Prophet (2001), was shown at Sundance, Toronto, Human Rights Watch and numerous other festivals.
Edwards lives in Brooklyn with his wife and their daughter.
For more information about Robert Edwards:
News
Robert Edwards is currently working on a handbook for OR books entitled
RESISTING THE RIGHT,
to be published Spring 2024
Books
Resisting the Right: How to Survive the Gathering Storm
Resisting the Right is a handbook for how to survive a right-wing autocracy in the United States. Frighteningly, that scenario looks increasingly likely.
The victory of a Republican, either Trump or another far right candidate, in the November 2024 presidential election, could be a prelude to the destruction of America’s democratic system, making a subsequent change of power almost impossible. That, Robert Edwards argues in this powerful and necessary intervention, is an eventuality for which we must prepare now.
Resisting the Right fast forwards past the ebb and flow of daily politics to a long-range preview of life under such an autocracy. It is structured as a practical guide, setting out how such a regime can be combated using political action, civil disobedience, economics, cyberspace, traditional media, social media, the arts, and even our personal relationships.
In a year whehen the future of America democracy teeters on a knife edge, the urgency of Resisting the Right could not be more acute.
(OR Books, March 2024)