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Announcement :: Peace |
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Vietnam: The War At Home -- Video Showing & Discussion |
Current rating: 0 |
by Brooke Anderson
Email: brooke (nospam) shout.net (unverified!)
Phone: (217) 493-2637 |
20 Apr 2003
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Attend a showing of this award-winning documentary, and learn lessons from the anti-Vietnam war movement for today's anti-war activists! |
WAR AT HOME Film Showing
Thursday, April 24th at 7pm
Illinois Disciples Foundation, 2nd floor
Springfield & Wright, Champaign
Dear friends,
Please join us next Thursday for a showing and facilitated discussion of the award-winning documentary, "The War at Home." This Academy Award-nominated film looks at the emergence, successes, and lessons of the Vietnam War protest movement at another Midwest, Big 10 school - the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
As on the UIUC campus, the National Guard was called to the Madison campus to quell student anti-war protests and the state violence that followed brought the war home for university students. The lessons of the anti-Vietnam War protests are of critical importance for today's anti-war activists as we contemplate the future of of our movement.
A discussion following the viewing will be facilitated by UIUC Anthropology Professor Alejandro Lugo, a former UW-Madison student. Discussion will include a comparison of today's American foreign policy and the role of the U.S. in the world during the Vietnam war.
This event is being organized as part of a Day of Action Against War on April 24th, 2003. For more information, contact the Progressive Resource/Action Cooperative at (217) 352-8721 or at prc (at) prairienet.org. For more information at the local anti-war movement, visit PRC's website at www.prairienet.org.
Thanks,
the PRC.
--------
p.s. -- Below follows a more extensive review of the film from First Run Icarus Films, also available on the web at: http://www.frif.com/cat97/t-z/the_war_.html
THE WAR AT HOME chronicles the awakening and growth of the Vietnam protest movement in the United States, from a handful of politically active students, to the street confrontations at the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago, to the killings at Kent State. Through both newsreel and current footage, we follow participants from all sides - students, police, and political figures of the time - as they face each other in growing confrontation.
This was a time of profound change in America, when the Civil Rights movement set the tone of the early 1960s. Civil disobedience, sit-ins and marches became accepted methods of arousing social conscience - and forcing political change from grass roots activism.
In its wake came Vietnam. In the beginning it was the hidden war, an afterthought to the America public, obscured by less than candid pronouncements of Asian policy from successive administrations. In the end, it became the largest domestic conflict since the Civil War in the history of the United States.
THE WAR AT HOME is an historical case history, a statement of the motivation and anatomy of a mass movement. The film uses archival television news footage from both fronts; the war in Vietnam and the protest movement in the United States. Events taking place at the University of Wisconsin, in Madison, are used as a microcosm of the national protest movement throughout the 60s and early 70s.
THE WAR AT HOME touches on many issues: the moral climate of the time, individual responsibility, citizen/government interaction on foreign policy issues, options available in a free society. The film is narrated by those who were involved on all sides, and provides an in-depth examination of an unsettling era and its current implications.
"THE WAR AT HOME can only grow in importance with the passage of time. It should be reviewed at regular intervals, so that each generation may understand what its parents felt and how they acted." - The Nation
"This brilliant documentary is valuable contemporary history... THE WAR AT HOME demonstrates that it is possible to cut through all the romantic nonsense about the Sixties and get to some approximation of fact... in some respect it is the best American film of the year!" - Boston Globe
"An extremely important film of profound and ongoing implications.... This turbulent decade has been superbly evoked... by taking a classical approach - diligent research, extraordinary archive footage, and pertinent interviews." - Los Angeles Times
"More than a mere exercise in political nostalgia... Using the embattled city of Madison, Wisconsin as a paradigm for the political turmoils of the 60s, the film traces the growing resistance to the war in Vietnam... refreshingly different in its sense of emotion recollected in tranquility." - Newsweek
"As pertinent today as it will be 30 years from now." - EFLA Evaluations
** 1980 Academy Award Nominee
** Blue Ribbon, 1980 American Film Festival
** Best Documentary, 1980 US Film Festival
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See also:
http://www.prairienet.org/prc
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Re: Vietnam: The War At Home -- Video Showing & Discussion |
by Jack Ryan
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 4
20 Apr 2003
Modified: 10:33:30 PM |
Brooke,
Perhaps some lessons on the Vietnam protest could help you folks. Your completely ineffective attempt this time proved utterly useless. I guess the fact that we won in three weeks with less than 150 battle deaths and the cheering crowds that awaited us did not help your cause. What you need is a Democrat in the White House who will tie the hands of our troops and give our enemy safe haven across borders created by our enemies. You need hundreds and thousands of deaths on both sides. You need a demorilized military not supported by the American People. You need an entire generation of spoiled brats who refuse to put their country ahead of themselves. You need a draft of unwilling and undermotivated troops who recoginize all of the above. You need a media with three major networks all saying the same thing, "America can not win this war". You need to destroy the internet and all cable channels with opposing views. You need an idelogy that has not as yet been soundly defeated whereever it has been tried (Communism) as an opponent to the only form of government that has has worked, Capitalism and Freedom.
Brooke, invite all your friends to go back to happier time when Americans were dying by the thousands in a war in which the protest movement divided the country and led to 20 years a malaze. (Jimmy Carter) Keep looking back. Perhaps you have forgotten the lessons of Vietnam, but our Military did not.
Jack |
