1981. The shabby treatment of returning combat soldiers from Vietnam is investigated.
1981. The shabby treatment of returning combat soldiers from Vietnam is investigated.
1981-05-06
0
The Tet Offensive during the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights Movement, the May events in France, the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy, the Prague Spring, the Chicago riots, the Mexico Summer Olympics, the presidential election of Richard Nixon, the Apollo 8 space mission, the hippies and the Yippies, Bullitt and the living dead. Once upon a time the year 1968.
The free, almost naive view from the perspective of a child puts the "68ers" in a new, illuminating light in the anniversary year 2008. The film is a provocative reckoning with the ideological upbringing that seemed so progressive and yet was suffocated by the children's desire to finally grow up. With an ironic eye and a feuilletonistic style, author Richard David Precht and Cologne documentary film director André Schäfer trace a childhood in the West German provinces - and place the major events of those years in completely different, smaller and very private contexts.
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.'
Following the tradition of military service in her family, Alene Duerk enlisted as a Navy nurse in 1943. During her eventful 32 year career, she served in WWII on a hospital ship in the Sea of Japan, and trained others in the Korean War. She became the Director of the Navy Nursing Corps during the Vietnam War before finally attaining the rank of Admiral in the U.S. Navy. Despite having no other women as mentors (or peers), Admiral Duerk always looked for challenging opportunities that women had not previously held. Her consistently high level of performance led to her ultimate rise to become the first woman Admiral.
For three days in 1971, former US soldiers who were in Vietnam testify in Detroit about their war experiences. Nearly 30 speak, describing atrocities personally committed or witnessed, telling of inaccurate body counts, and recounting the process of destroying a village.
In April 1975 -- despite a ceasefire agreement -- the North Vietnamese communists took Saigon and the world by surprise, mounting an offensive that ousted the South Vietnamese government. This enlightening documentary recounts the last two years of America's military engagement in the country and the U.S. role in Saigon's fall. Interviews with former National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger and North Vietnamese officers provide context.
A documentary about militant student political activity at the University of California, Berkeley in the 1960s.
Sir! No Sir! is a documentary film about the anti-war movement within the ranks of the United States Military during the Vietnam War. It consists in part of interviews with Vietnam veterans explaining the reasons they protested the war or even defected. The film tells the story of how, from the very start of the war, there was resentment within the ranks over the difference between the conflict in Vietnam and the "good wars" that their fathers had fought. Over time, it became apparent that so many were opposed to the war that they could speak of a movement.
A visit to the famed aircraft carrier USS Midway and interviews with men who served aboard it bring the exciting story of the vessel to life in this dramatic documentary. In service for 47 years, the Midway saw heavy action during the Vietnam War, and its hair-raising missions to rescue downed pilots were legendary. After Vietnam, the Midway, now berthed in San Diego, participated in numerous operations, including the Gulf War.
The story of U.S. fighter pilots shot down over North Vietnam who became POWs for up to 8 and a half years.
Three decades after German-American pilot Dieter Dengler was shot down over Laos, he returns to the places where he was held prisoner during the early years of the Vietnam War. Accompanied by director Werner Herzog, Dengler describes in unusually candid detail his captivity, the friendships he made, and his daring escape. Not willing to stop there, Herzog even persuades his subject to re-enact certain tortures, with the help of some willing local villagers.
Mondo-style docudrama about a war correspondent who comes back home and has a spiritual crisis about his own mortality. Surreal fantasy sequences are mixed with graphic real autopsy footage.
Archival footage, animation and music are used to look back at the eight anti-war protesters who were put on trial following the 1968 Democratic National Convention.
Blood Road follows the journey of ultra-endurance mountain bike athlete Rebecca Rusch and her Vietnamese riding partner, Huyen Nguyen, as they pedal 1,200 miles along the infamous Ho Chi Minh Trail through the dense jungles of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. Their goal: to reach the site where Rebecca’s father, a U.S. Air Force pilot, was shot down in Laos more than 40 years earlier.
Many times during his presidency, Lyndon B. Johnson said that ultimate victory in the Vietnam War depended upon the U.S. military winning the "hearts and minds" of the Vietnamese people. Filmmaker Peter Davis uses Johnson's phrase in an ironic context in this anti-war documentary, filmed and released while the Vietnam War was still under way, juxtaposing interviews with military figures like U.S. Army Chief of Staff William C. Westmoreland with shocking scenes of violence and brutality.
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.
During the Vietnam War, the US bombed Laos more heavily than any other country had been bombed before. Today, the Lao people live among, and risk their lives to clear, over 80 million unexploded bombs on their doorsteps. With great beauty and empathy, this documentary reveals the unbelievable stories of the men and women at the forefront of this monumental task.
Real-life letters written by American soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines during the Vietnam War to their families and friends back home. Archive footage of the war and news coverage thereof augment the first-person "narrative" by men and women who were in the war, some of whom did not survive it.
Both sober and sobering, producer-director Emile de Antonio’s In the Year of the Pig is a powerful and, no doubt for many, controversial documentary about the Vietnam War.
In 1973, 591 American POWs returned home from the Vietnam War, bringing with them harrowing tales of survival. But there was an even more remarkable -- and secret -- story to tell: a feat of incredible spycraft that remained classified for decades...until now. This is the unbelievable story of James Stockdale and his fellow prisoners at the notorious "Hanoi Hilton." Their clandestine communications with U.S. intelligence alerted the CIA and Pentagon to the horrors of the Vietnamese POW camps and prompted a daring, top-secret rescue mission.