Anti-war dramas and documentaries are
powerful but underutilized teaching tools for raising consciousness and
deepening understanding. Don't
watch these movies alone! Get friends
and acquaintences to watch them with you, and encourage them
to do the same with their other friends.
In the Valley of Elah
Scheduled
to open: September 14, 2007 (limited, going wider on the
21st) Watch the
trailer here.
Synopsis:
"In the Valley of Elah" tells the story of a war veteran (Tommy Lee
Jones), his wife (Susan Sarandon) and the search for their son, a
soldier who recently returned from Iraq but has mysteriously gone
missing, and the police detective (Charlize Theron) who helps in the
investigation. Paul Haggis directs from his original screenplay based
on a story by Mark Boal and Haggis. This will be Haggis' directing
follow-up to the Academy Award-winning "Crash." In addition to the
Oscar-winning screenplay for "Crash," his recent writing credits
include the award-winning "Million Dollar Baby," for which he received
an Academy Award-nomination for Best Screenplay, and current releases
"The Last Kiss," "Flags of Our Fathers," sino Royale" and "Letters From
Iwo Jima." The film is produced by Paul Haggis, Larry Becsey, Patrick
Wachsberger, Steve Samuels and Darlene Caamano Loquet. A Summit
Entertainment and Samuels Media presentation in association with Nala
Films and Blackfriars Bridge.
Written
and Directed by: Paul Haggis Cast:
Tommy Lee Jones, Charlize Theron, Susan Sarandon, Jason
Patric Rating: This film is not yet rated.
Joyeux Noel
In
1914, World War I, the bloodiest war ever at
that time in human history, was well under way. However on Christmas
Eve, numerous sections of the Western Front called an informal, and
unauthorized, truce where the various front-line soldiers of the
conflict peacefully met each other in No Man's Land to share a precious
pause in the carnage with a fleeting brotherhood. This film dramatizes
one such section as the French, British and German sides partake in the
unique event, even though they are aware that their superiors will not
tolerate its occurrence.
Shut up and Sing
Shut up and sing is a documentary film produced
and directed by Barbara Kopple and Cecilia Peck. The film follows the
Texas-based country music female trio the Dixie Chicks over three years
while the group was under fire after lead singer Natalie Maines
publicly criticizing the President of the United States George W. Bush
in a 2003 concert in London. The title of the film makes reference to
the request by proponents of American conservatism (and by commentator
Laura Ingraham in particular, whose book was so titled) that
entertainers refrain from making political comments.
Why we fight
Why
we fight is an unflinching look at the
anatomy of the American war machine, weaving unforgettable personal
stories with commentary by a "who's who" of military and beltway
insiders. Featuring John McCain, William Kristol, Chalmers Johnson,
GOre Vidal, Richard Perle and others, Why We Fight launches a
bipartisan inquiry into the workings of the military industrial complex
and the rise of the American Empire.
Inspired by
Dwight Eisenhower's legendary farewell speech filmmaker Jarecki surveys
the scorched landscape of a half-century's military adventures, asking
how-- and telling why-- a nation of, by, and for the people has become
the savings-and-loan of a system whose survival depends on the constant
state of war.
US vs. John Lennon
"The U.S. vs. John Lennon" tells the story of
Lennon's transformation from loveable moptop to anti-war activist, and
recounts the facts about Nixon's campaign to deport him in 1972. With
Walter Cronkite, Gore Vidal, Mario Cuomo, George McGovern, Angela
Davis, Bobby Seale, G. Gordon Liddy, Yoko Ono, and Jon Wiener--and
archival footage of Richard Nixon, J. Edgar Hoover, and John Lennon.
Regret to inform
On her twenty-fourth birthday, Barbara Sonneborn
received a knock on her door from a United States Army soldier, and
heard the words "We regret to inform you...." Her husband Jeff had been
killed by a mortar in Vietnam. She received a box containing Jeff's dog
tags still encrusted with his blood. Twenty years later, Sonneborn
embarks on a journey through the country where he fought and died.
Woven into her personal odyssey are interviews with American and
Vietnamese widows from both sides of the conflict who speak openly
about the men they loved and how war changed their lives forever.
Iraq for Sale
Iraq
for Sale: The War Profiteers is the story of
what happens to everyday Americans when corporations go to war.
Acclaimed director Robert Greenwald (Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low
Price, Outfoxed and Uncovered) takes you inside the lives of soldiers,
truck drivers, widows and children who have been changed forever as a
result of profiteering in the reconstruction of Iraq. Iraq for Sale
uncovers the connections between private corporations making a killing
in Iraq and the decision makers who allow them to do so.
Sir! No Sir!
Sir! No Sir! is
a powerful film that shows how GI resistance to the Vietnam War
infested the entire armed services, flourishing in army stockades, navy
brigs, in the dingy towns that surround military bases, and throughout
the battlefields of Vietnam.
The Ground Truth
The Ground Truth is a powerful and quietly
unflinching documentary that follows the lives of patriotic young
Americans--ordinary young Americans who
heeded the call for military service in
Iraq as they experience recruitment
and training, combat, homecoming, and the struggle to reintegrate with
families and communities. The terrible conflict in Iraq, depicted with
ferocious honesty in the film, is a prelude for the even more
challenging battles fought by the soldiers returning home--with personal demons, an
uncomprehending public, and an indifferent government. As these battles
take shape, each soldier becomes a new kind of hero, bearing witness
and giving support to other veterans, and learning to fearlessly wield
the most powerful weapon of all - the truth.
The War Tapes
March
2004, just as the insurgent movement strengthened, several members of
one National Guard unit arrived in Iraq, carrying digital video
cameras. The War Tapes follows three men: Sergeant Steve Pink, a young
carpenter who joined the Guard for college money; Sergeant Zack Bazzi,
a traveler and university student; and Specialist Mike Moriarty, a
husband and father driven to fight by honor and redemption. With
Director Deborah�s guidance, the
soldiers shot over 900 hours of videotape during their yearlong
deployment. These soldiers got the story the 2,700 embedded reporters
never could.
The Road to Guantanamo
Road
to Guantanamo is the terrifying first-hand account of three British
citizens who were held for two years without charges in the American
military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Known as the "Tipton
Three," in reference to their home
town in Britain, the three were eventually returned to Britain and
released, still having had no formal charges ever made against them at
any time during their ordeal. Part documentary, part dramatization, the
film chronicls the sequence of events that led from the trio setting
out from Tipton in the British Midlands for a wedding in Pakistan, to
their crossing the Afghanistan border just as the U.S. began their
invasion, to their eventual capture by the Northern Alliance and their
imprisonment in Camp X-Ray and later at Camp Delta in Guantanamo.
Winter Solider
Winter
Soldier documents the "Winter Soldier Investigation" conducted by
Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) in Detroit, Michigan in the
winter of 1971. This heartfelt, emotional story follows the VVAW as
they call to veterans all over the country to come to Detroit to tell
their stories. At the investigation, over 125 veterans representing
every major combat unit to see action in Vietnam, gave eye-witness
testimony to war crimes and atrocities they either participated in or
witnessed. The purpose of the investigation was to bring to light the
nature of American military policy in Vietnam.
Uncovered: The War on Iraq
In
his documentary feature, UNCOVERED: The War on
Iraq, filmmaker Robert Greenwald chronicles the Bush Administration's
determined quest to invade Iraq following the events of September 11,
2001. The film deconstructs the administration's case for war through
interviews with U.S intelligence and defense officials, foreign service
experts, and U.N. weapons inspectors -- including a former CIA
director, a former ambassador to Saudi Arabia and even President Bush's
Secretary of the Army. Their analyses and conclusions are sobering, and
often disturbing, regardless of one's political affiliations.
Occupation: Dreamland
Occupation:
Dreamland is an unflinchingly candid portrait of a squad of American
soldiers deployed in the doomed Iraq city of Falluja during the winter
of 2004. A collective study of the soldiers unfolds as they patrol an
environment of low-intensity conflict creeping steadily towards
catastrophe. Through the squads activities Occupation: Dreamland
provides a vital glimpse into the last days of Falluja. The film
documents the citys waning stability before a final series of military
assaults began in the spring of 2004 that effectively destroyed
it.
Mission Accomplished
With
tongue planted firmly in cheek, journalist
Sean Langan swipes his title from the banner that flew aboard the USS
Lincoln in May of 2003 when President George W. Bush declared the Iraq
War a grand success. Reporting from the notorious Sunni Triangle more
than six months after the war has "ended", Langan captures a profound
grassroots view of resistance fighters and American troops in a region
where few reporters dared to travel. An important and eye-opening
documentary.
Control Room
A chronicle
which provides a rare window into the international perception of the
Iraq War, courtesy of Al Jazeera, the Arab world's most popular news
outlet. Roundly criticized by Cabinet members and Pentagon officials
for reporting with a pro-Iraqi bias, and strongly condemned for
frequently airing civilian causalities as well as footage of American
POWs, the station has revealed (and continues to show the world)
everything about the Iraq War that the Bush administration did not want
it to see.
I Know I am Not
Alone
Armed
with an acoustic guitar and a video camera,
musician Michael Franti takes us on a musical journey through war and
occupation in Iraq, Israel and Palestine. Along the way he shares his
music with families, doctors, musicians, soldiers and everyday people
who in turn reveal to him the often overlooked human cost of war.
With its guerrilla style footage captured in active war zones, the
documentary is unlike the many academic and politically driven pieces
in the marketplace, instead offering the audience a sense of intimate
travel and the opportunity to hear the voices of everyday people
living, creating and surviving under the harsh conditions of war and
occupation.
Arlington West
Arlington
West
is a film that documents the reactions of everyday Americans as they
visit the sands of Santa Barbara's
West Beach. Produced for Veterans for Peace under the direction of
Peter Dudar and Sally Marr, this film shows an area that has sprouted
into a national phenomena and become the de facto burial ground for the
more than 1,000 American soldiers killed since the war in Iraq began in
March 2003. In a series of close-up interviews with proud and
inquisitive soldiers, grieving relatives, and passersby of all ages
intermixed with longer pans of the crosses and mourners in action,
Arlington West provides a meaningful glimpse at a questionable war.
Characters include everyone from cute, forward-thinking kids to
ignorant, backward-thinking adults. Among other tear-jerking, heartfelt
memories of fallen friends and family, all under the lens of "why?" The scene of a young soldier who
lays flowers and kisses on the crosses of more than two dozen of his
former mates reigns as memorable. But most troublesome of all is the
sign early on in the film that announces, "If we were to honor the
Iraqi dead, it would fill this entire beach." If it goes on much
longer, we may need to bring in some more sand.
Peace
One Day
Peace
One Day is
the story of one man's attempts to
persuade the global community via the United Nations to officially
sanction a global ceasefire day; a day of non-violence; a day of Peace.
This documentary charts the remarkable 6-year journey of the filmmaker
as he meets heads of state, Nobel Peace Laureates, aid agencies,
freedom fighters, media moguls, the innocent victims of war and,
eventually, everyone who was anyone at the UN. An individual genuinely
can make a difference: The UN International Day of Peace is now fixed
in the calendar on 21st September annually. The real challenge has now
begun - to get the world to unite on a day fast approaching.
Scheduled
to open: September 14, 2007 (limited, going wider on the
21st) 
In
1914, World War I, the bloodiest war ever at
that time in human history, was well under way. However on Christmas
Eve, numerous sections of the Western Front called an informal, and
unauthorized, truce where the various front-line soldiers of the
conflict peacefully met each other in No Man's Land to share a precious
pause in the carnage with a fleeting brotherhood. This film dramatizes
one such section as the French, British and German sides partake in the
unique event, even though they are aware that their superiors will not
tolerate its occurrence.
Shut up and sing is a documentary film produced
and directed by Barbara Kopple and Cecilia Peck. The film follows the
Texas-based country music female trio the Dixie Chicks over three years
while the group was under fire after lead singer Natalie Maines
publicly criticizing the President of the United States George W. Bush
in a 2003 concert in London. The title of the film makes reference to
the request by proponents of American conservatism (and by commentator
Laura Ingraham in particular, whose book was so titled) that
entertainers refrain from making political comments. 
Why
we fight is an unflinching look at the
anatomy of the American war machine, weaving unforgettable personal
stories with commentary by a "who's who" of military and beltway
insiders. Featuring John McCain, William Kristol, Chalmers Johnson,
GOre Vidal, Richard Perle and others, Why We Fight launches a
bipartisan inquiry into the workings of the military industrial complex
and the rise of the American Empire.
"The U.S. vs. John Lennon" tells the story of
Lennon's transformation from loveable moptop to anti-war activist, and
recounts the facts about Nixon's campaign to deport him in 1972. With
Walter Cronkite, Gore Vidal, Mario Cuomo, George McGovern, Angela
Davis, Bobby Seale, G. Gordon Liddy, Yoko Ono, and Jon Wiener--and
archival footage of Richard Nixon, J. Edgar Hoover, and John Lennon. 
On her twenty-fourth birthday, Barbara Sonneborn
received a knock on her door from a United States Army soldier, and
heard the words "We regret to inform you...." Her husband Jeff had been
killed by a mortar in Vietnam. She received a box containing Jeff's dog
tags still encrusted with his blood. Twenty years later, Sonneborn
embarks on a journey through the country where he fought and died.
Woven into her personal odyssey are interviews with American and
Vietnamese widows from both sides of the conflict who speak openly
about the men they loved and how war changed their lives forever.
Iraq
for Sale: The War Profiteers is the story of
what happens to everyday Americans when corporations go to war.
Acclaimed director Robert Greenwald (Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low
Price, Outfoxed and Uncovered) takes you inside the lives of soldiers,
truck drivers, widows and children who have been changed forever as a
result of profiteering in the reconstruction of Iraq. Iraq for Sale
uncovers the connections between private corporations making a killing
in Iraq and the decision makers who allow them to do so. 
Sir! No Sir! is
a powerful film that shows how GI resistance to the Vietnam War
infested the entire armed services, flourishing in army stockades, navy
brigs, in the dingy towns that surround military bases, and throughout
the battlefields of Vietnam.
The Ground Truth is a powerful and quietly
unflinching documentary that follows the lives of patriotic young
Americans--ordinary young Americans who
heeded the call for military service in
Iraq as they experience recruitment
and training, combat, homecoming, and the struggle to reintegrate with
families and communities. The terrible conflict in Iraq, depicted with
ferocious honesty in the film, is a prelude for the even more
challenging battles fought by the soldiers returning home--with personal demons, an
uncomprehending public, and an indifferent government. As these battles
take shape, each soldier becomes a new kind of hero, bearing witness
and giving support to other veterans, and learning to fearlessly wield
the most powerful weapon of all - the truth. 
March
2004, just as the insurgent movement strengthened, several members of
one National Guard unit arrived in Iraq, carrying digital video
cameras. The War Tapes follows three men: Sergeant Steve Pink, a young
carpenter who joined the Guard for college money; Sergeant Zack Bazzi,
a traveler and university student; and Specialist Mike Moriarty, a
husband and father driven to fight by honor and redemption. With
Director Deborah�s guidance, the
soldiers shot over 900 hours of videotape during their yearlong
deployment. These soldiers got the story the 2,700 embedded reporters
never could.
Road
to Guantanamo is the terrifying first-hand account of three British
citizens who were held for two years without charges in the American
military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Known as the "Tipton
Three," in reference to their home
town in Britain, the three were eventually returned to Britain and
released, still having had no formal charges ever made against them at
any time during their ordeal. Part documentary, part dramatization, the
film chronicls the sequence of events that led from the trio setting
out from Tipton in the British Midlands for a wedding in Pakistan, to
their crossing the Afghanistan border just as the U.S. began their
invasion, to their eventual capture by the Northern Alliance and their
imprisonment in Camp X-Ray and later at Camp Delta in Guantanamo. 
Winter
Soldier documents the "Winter Soldier Investigation" conducted by
Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) in Detroit, Michigan in the
winter of 1971. This heartfelt, emotional story follows the VVAW as
they call to veterans all over the country to come to Detroit to tell
their stories. At the investigation, over 125 veterans representing
every major combat unit to see action in Vietnam, gave eye-witness
testimony to war crimes and atrocities they either participated in or
witnessed. The purpose of the investigation was to bring to light the
nature of American military policy in Vietnam. 
In
his documentary feature, UNCOVERED: The War on
Iraq, filmmaker Robert Greenwald chronicles the Bush Administration's
determined quest to invade Iraq following the events of September 11,
2001. The film deconstructs the administration's case for war through
interviews with U.S intelligence and defense officials, foreign service
experts, and U.N. weapons inspectors -- including a former CIA
director, a former ambassador to Saudi Arabia and even President Bush's
Secretary of the Army. Their analyses and conclusions are sobering, and
often disturbing, regardless of one's political affiliations. 
Occupation:
Dreamland is an unflinchingly candid portrait of a squad of American
soldiers deployed in the doomed Iraq city of Falluja during the winter
of 2004. A collective study of the soldiers unfolds as they patrol an
environment of low-intensity conflict creeping steadily towards
catastrophe. Through the squads activities Occupation: Dreamland
provides a vital glimpse into the last days of Falluja. The film
documents the citys waning stability before a final series of military
assaults began in the spring of 2004 that effectively destroyed
it. 
With
tongue planted firmly in cheek, journalist
Sean Langan swipes his title from the banner that flew aboard the USS
Lincoln in May of 2003 when President George W. Bush declared the Iraq
War a grand success. Reporting from the notorious Sunni Triangle more
than six months after the war has "ended", Langan captures a profound
grassroots view of resistance fighters and American troops in a region
where few reporters dared to travel. An important and eye-opening
documentary. 
A chronicle
which provides a rare window into the international perception of the
Iraq War, courtesy of Al Jazeera, the Arab world's most popular news
outlet. Roundly criticized by Cabinet members and Pentagon officials
for reporting with a pro-Iraqi bias, and strongly condemned for
frequently airing civilian causalities as well as footage of American
POWs, the station has revealed (and continues to show the world)
everything about the Iraq War that the Bush administration did not want
it to see. 
Armed
with an acoustic guitar and a video camera,
musician Michael Franti takes us on a musical journey through war and
occupation in Iraq, Israel and Palestine. Along the way he shares his
music with families, doctors, musicians, soldiers and everyday people
who in turn reveal to him the often overlooked human cost of war. 
Arlington
West
is a film that documents the reactions of everyday Americans as they
visit the sands of Santa Barbara's
West Beach. Produced for Veterans for Peace under the direction of
Peter Dudar and Sally Marr, this film shows an area that has sprouted
into a national phenomena and become the de facto burial ground for the
more than 1,000 American soldiers killed since the war in Iraq began in
March 2003. In a series of close-up interviews with proud and
inquisitive soldiers, grieving relatives, and passersby of all ages
intermixed with longer pans of the crosses and mourners in action,
Arlington West provides a meaningful glimpse at a questionable war.
Characters include everyone from cute, forward-thinking kids to
ignorant, backward-thinking adults. Among other tear-jerking, heartfelt
memories of fallen friends and family, all under the lens of "why?" The scene of a young soldier who
lays flowers and kisses on the crosses of more than two dozen of his
former mates reigns as memorable. But most troublesome of all is the
sign early on in the film that announces, "If we were to honor the
Iraqi dead, it would fill this entire beach." If it goes on much
longer, we may need to bring in some more sand.
Peace
One Day is
the story of one man's attempts to
persuade the global community via the United Nations to officially
sanction a global ceasefire day; a day of non-violence; a day of Peace.
This documentary charts the remarkable 6-year journey of the filmmaker
as he meets heads of state, Nobel Peace Laureates, aid agencies,
freedom fighters, media moguls, the innocent victims of war and,
eventually, everyone who was anyone at the UN. An individual genuinely
can make a difference: The UN International Day of Peace is now fixed
in the calendar on 21st September annually. The real challenge has now
begun - to get the world to unite on a day fast approaching.