Biography

Robert H. Gardner (born, June 3, 1947, in Berkeley, California) is an American documentary filmmaker, producer and director of the Academy Award-nominated Courage to Care, Emmy Award-winning Egypt: Quest for Immortality, Dupont Columbia Award-winning Arab and Jew: Wounded Spirits in the Promised Land, National Geographic Explorer series; Search for the Lost Ark, Tiwanaku, and Desert Warriors; The History Channel series Barbarians, Barbarians II, and Rome: Rise and Fall of an Empire. In 2001 his groundbreaking series Islam: Empire of Faith aired on PBS, as well as Islamic Art: Mirror of the Invisible World in 2012. He began working in 1967 in Washington, D.C., as a camera and editing assistant for Eli Productions, producing social issue documentaries for the short-lived, experimental television show, Public Broadcast Laboratory, on NET, the precursor to PBS. In 1968 he was part of the documentary crew covering the presidential campaign of Hubert Humphrey. He directed and edited children’s television series for Northern Virginia Educational Television in the 1970s and was Senior Producer for Special Projects at The United Way of America from 1982-1985. In 1986 he founded Gardner Films Inc. an independent production company.