Athena Cinema to screen OHIO alumna’s Vietnam War documentaries on Veterans Day

Ohio University alumna and Emmy Award-winning filmmaker Robin Smith (BFA ’72) will return to Athens on Wednesday, Nov. 11, to share two documentaries chronicling her family’s decades-long search for answers about the fate of her father, U.S. Marine Corps Col. Robert N. Smith, whose plane was shot down over North Vietnam in 1969.

The Athena Cinema will screen Smith’s films, “He’s Only Missing” (1978) and “Letting Go” (1995), as part of a Veterans Day event beginning at 7 p.m. Smith will introduce the films, followed by a conversation about her work and her journey to uncover what happened to her father.

A reception with Smith will begin at 7 p.m., with the screenings at 7:30 p.m. and a conversation with her following the films.

“He’s Only Missing” explores the “state of limbo” Smith and her family experienced after her father was declared Missing in Action, uncertain whether he was dead or alive. The documentary was Smith’s first film and became the beginning of a nearly five-decade career in documentary filmmaking and broadcast journalism.

Nearly two decades later, “Letting Go” follows Smith as the first information about her father’s fate began to emerge. She traveled to Vietnam with a CBS News crew and visited the site where her father’s plane had crashed, uncovering answers that had eluded her family for years.

Smith earned a bachelor’s degree from Ohio University in 1972 and a master’s degree from Boston University in 1978. After CBS acquired the rights to “He’s Only Missing,” Smith began her broadcast journalism career with CBS News Sunday Morning with Charles Kuralt.

In 1990, she founded video|action, a nonprofit production company that collaborates with educators, artists and innovative program leaders to create documentary shorts and public awareness videos. Her work has earned numerous awards, including an Emmy.

Smith currently serves on the Chaddock + Morrow College of Fine Arts Leadership Council and as a trustee on the Ohio University Foundation Board.