Spring 1970: Godard and Gorin, on the road, visiting colleges, speaking with Andrew Sarris, and explaining, through illustrated notebooks, their newest Dziga Vertov Group project, a film on Palestine.
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A short documentary that explores a blue-collar community’s growing unease with the Vietnam War. It was produced in response to President Nixon’s famous November, 1969 speech when he contrasted the unlawful and vocal anti-war protesters to the respectful “silent majority” who were in favor of remaining in Vietnam to fight communism. This film explores the thoughts and opinions of the “silent majority” represented by the folks living in the Garfield Ridge neighborhood on the southwest side of Chicago.
Tom Savini is one of the greatest special effects legends in the history of cinema, but little is known about his personal life until now. For the first time ever a feature length film has covered not only Tom's amazing career spanning over four decades, but his personal life as well.
Looking back on the creation of the Vietnam Memorial, this Emmy-nominated documentary chronicles the controversy surrounding the monument's construction and touches on the history of the polarizing war that inspired it. Fueled by the vision of Vietnam veteran Jan Scruggs and brought to life by then-fledgling designer Maya Lin, the memorial would eventually become the nation's most visited monument. But its success was a hard-fought victory.
The untold stories of six Australian army nurses who served at the only Australian field hospital in the Vietnam War.
An anti-war film about the personal suffering behind the hard statistics, which show that more than four million Vietnamese died during the Vietnam War, as opposed to 58,000 Americans. We hear South and North Vietnamese, including émigrés to the United States, describing how huge numbers of friends met their deaths, caught as they were between government forces, the Vietcong, and the Americans; how political boundaries divided not only the country, but also families; how mothers deserted their children because their fathers were American soldiers; and how the war cruelly lingers on long after hostilities ceased, in the lives of children born crippled by chemical weapons.
In okay bye-bye, so named for what Cambodian children shouted to the U.S. ambassador in 1975 as he took the last helicopter out of Phnom Phenh in advance of the Khmer Rouge, Rebecca Baron explores the relationship of history to memory. She questions whether, "image and memory can occupy the same space." Building on excerpts from letters, found super-8 footage of an unidentified Cambodian man, iconographic photographs from the Vietnam War and other partial images, Baron combines epistolary narrative, memoir, journalism, and official histories to question whether something as monumental as the genocidal slaughter of Cambodians during the Pol Pot regime can be examined effectively with traditional methodologies.
The story of the resistance of the people of the Vinh Linh area of Vietnam which was heavily bombed by the United States during the Vietnamese War. (Note: The film crew itself was bombed; three crew members passed away and chief cameraman was heavily injured. The director re-shot the destroyed film albeit in shortened form.)
The events of the film occur during the initial implementation of President Nixon's policy of Vietnamization, which called for US troops to turn over the war effort to the South Vietnamese Army. Caught in that transition, Firebase Kate receives no support from the South Vietnamese troops in the area, leaving them severely outmanned and outgunned, and in imminent danger of being overrun. Their only option is a desperate late night escape and evasion through a jungle filled with NVA soldiers.
Historians, veterans, politicians, and anti-war leaders discuss the history of the military draft in the United States through the Vietnam War, and examine the consequences of its replacement with an all-volunteer professional force currently comprising less than one-half of one percent of the population.
The Vietnam War protest movement from the student point of view is the basis for this documentary shot in the San Francisco Bay area and dealing mainly with a protest march from the University of California to the Oakland Army Terminal in 1966.
American Experience looks at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago where Vice President Hubert Humphrey won his party's nomination for president amid massive civil unrest and violence perpetrated by Chicago Police and anti-Vietnam War protesters.
The enigmatic nature of the Nixon presidency combined comparatively progressive legislative initiatives with a flagrant abuse of presidential power and the public trust. His achievements in expanding peaceful relations with China and the Soviet Union stand in stark contrast with his continuation of the war in Vietnam. Finally brought down by scandal and duplicity, his administration did much to erode the citizenry's faith in government.
Philip Jones Griffith was a U.K. wartime photographer during the Vietnam War. He decides to reconstruct the Vietnam War from the point of view of the victims. A documentary that takes the form of an essay using photographs of victims who fell as they were treated worse than bugs.
On May 8, 1970, construction workers violently clashed with students demonstrating against the Vietnam War in lower Manhattan. The workmen, who came to be known as “hardhats,” were at the cutting edge of a new kind of class war. With the war in Vietnam raging on, it was the sons of the working class who were doing most of the fighting. Workmen saw the protesting students as privileged “draft dodgers” disparaging the country and those who fought for it. On the other side, many student activists saw the workers as pawns, unwilling to see the changes that America needed. Hard Hat Riot tells the story of a struggling metropolis, a flailing president, a divided people, and a bloody juncture when the nation violently diverged ― culminating in a new political and cultural landscape that radically redefined American politics and foreshadowed the future.
How does a nation slip into war? Dateline-Saigon profiles the controversial reporting of five Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists -The New York Times' David Halberstam, the Associated Press' Malcolm Browne, Peter Arnett, and legendary photojournalist Horst Faas, and UPI's Neil Sheehan -- during the early years of the Vietnam War as President John F. Kennedy is secretly committing US troops to what is initially dismissed by some as 'a nice little war in a land of tigers and elephants.' 'When the government is telling the truth, reporters become a relatively unimportant conduit to what is happening,' Halberstam tells us. 'But when the government doesn't tell the truth, begins to twist the truth, hide the truth, then the journalist becomes involuntarily infinitely more important.'
Henry Fonda-narrated 1966 ABC documentary that follows a wounded soldier in Vietnam from the field, through the medical system, and back home to the USA. It aired on ABC TV October 24, 1966 and again in January 1967. Time Magazine: "Henry Fonda narrates a documentary recording the everyday heroism of helicopter pilots, doctors and flight nurses in Viet Nam." TV Guide: " The thrilling story of combat medical teamwork in a jungle war ... of the inconspicuous heroes who risk their lives to save others. In a word, the story of courage...."
Hosted by Louis Gossett, Jr., this film examines the struggle it took to create the Vientnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. Released upon the Memorial's fifteenth anniversary, it includes interviews with veterans, senators, businessmen, and supporters.
Short documentary on the solidarity of the Cuban people with Vietnam during the war against the United States.
Part History Channel, part visual diary, and part mesmerizing abstraction, Allan Sekula’s video, A Short Film for Laos, 2006, takes the measure of day-to-day life in what the narrator describes as “the most bombed place on earth.”…
When Allied forces liberated the Nazi concentration camps in 1944-45, their terrible discoveries were recorded by army and newsreel cameramen, revealing for the first time the full horror of what had happened. Making use of British, Soviet and American footage, the Ministry of Information’s Sidney Bernstein (later founder of Granada Television) aimed to create a documentary that would provide lasting, undeniable evidence of the Nazis’ unspeakable crimes. He commissioned a wealth of British talent, including editor Stewart McAllister, writer and future cabinet minister Richard Crossman – and, as treatment advisor, his friend Alfred Hitchcock. Yet, despite initial support from the British and US Governments, the film was shelved, and only now, 70 years on, has it been restored and completed by Imperial War Museums under its original title "German Concentration Camps Factual Survey".
Director Michael Apted revisits the same group of British-born adults after a 7 year wait. The subjects are interviewed as to the changes that have occurred in their lives during the last seven years.
A depiction of life in wartime Britain during the Second World War. Director Humphrey Jennings visits many aspects of civilian life and of the turmoil and privation caused by the war, all without narration.
A compilation of over 30 years of private home movie footage shot by Lithuanian-American avant-garde director Jonas Mekas, assembled by Mekas "purely by chance", without concern for chronological order.
Biographical documentary of the war photographer Don McCullin, with sections on his upbringing, early work for the Observer and extensive war reporting for the Sunday Times until the purchase of the newspaper by Rupert Murdoch in the 1980s.
During the chaotic final weeks of the Vietnam War, the North Vietnamese Army closes in on Saigon as the panicked South Vietnamese people desperately attempt to escape. On the ground, American soldiers and diplomats confront a moral quandary: whether to obey White House orders to evacuate only U.S. citizens.
Over seven decades, actor and activist George Takei journeyed from a World War II internment camp to the helm of the Starship Enterprise, and then to the daily news feeds of five million Facebook fans. Join George and his husband, Brad, on a wacky and profound trek for life, liberty, and love.
Going beyond the occasional news clip from Burma, the acclaimed filmmaker, Anders Østergaard, brings us close to the video journalists who deliver the footage. Though risking torture and life in jail, courageous young citizens of Burma live the essence of journalism as they insist on keeping up the flow of news from their closed country.
A documentary on the life of John Lennon, with a focus on the time in his life when he transformed from a musician into an antiwar activist.
The most comprehensive retrospective of the '80s action film genre ever made.
Brilliant, long in-the-works story of the life and art of the world's greatest comedian and the cinema's first genius, Charlie Chaplin. Produced, written and directed by renowned film critic Richard Schickel.
Dubbed “The Cannibal Cop,” former NYPD officer Gilberto Valle was charged with conspiring to kidnap and eat women but argued it was all a fantasy. His story made headlines both for its disturbing details and its potential to kick off a trend of thought-policing across the nation. Featuring intimate interviews with Valle and insights from experts, Thought Crimes explores if someone can be found guilty for their most dangerous thoughts.
In the Realms of the Unreal is a documentary about the reclusive Chicago-based artist Henry Darger. Henry Darger was so reclusive that when he died his neighbors were surprised to find a 15,145-page manuscript along with hundreds of paintings depicting The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glodeco-Angelinnian War Storm, Cased by the Child Slave Rebellion.
Lyrical and powerfully personal essay film that reflects on the deaths of her husband Lou Reed, her mother, her beloved dog, and such diverse subjects as family memories, surveillance, and Buddhist teachings.
Hollywood veteran Bing Russell creates the only independent baseball team in the country—alarming the baseball establishment and sparking the meteoric rise of the 1970s Portland Mavericks.
The film follows adventurer Jeff Johnson as he retraces the epic 1968 journey of his heroes Yvon Chouinard and Doug Tompkins to Patagonia.
RETURN tells the story of a retired Green Beret who embarks on a healing journey from Montana to Vietnam. There he retraces his steps, shares his wartime experiences with his son, treats his Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and seeks out the mountain tribespeople he once lived with and fought alongside as a Special Forces officer.
A documentary that explores the downloading revolution; the kids that created it, the bands and the businesses that were affected by it, and its impact on the world at large.
With unprecedented access, this documentary follows the extraordinary journey of “Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently”—a group of anonymous citizen journalists who banded together after their homeland was overtaken by ISIS—as they risk their lives to stand up against one of the greatest evils in the world today.
A documentary on the expletive's origin, why it offends some people so deeply, and what can be gained from its use.