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Kaffeine Buzz
reviews independent and foreign films,
in addition to reporting the latest buzz behind
Colorado's film festivals.
SIR! NO SIR! (David Zeiger)
SIR! NO SIR! unearths the GI
movement of the Vietnam War, perhaps the most
creative and global activist movement of 1960’s
America. This documentary tells the story of the
thousands of veterans and active duty military
personnel that protested the very war in which
they fought and haunts us with the question of
how their voices dissipated from our country’s
collective memory.
The format and narration of the film are reminiscent
of the famous civil right’s series Eyes
on the Prize, jumping between black and white
pictures of young soldiers to color images of
more experienced faces and from magnified news
headlines of the day to interviews to war footage.
The affect of returning to the moment creates
a feeling of urgency in the chest as we continually
become immersed in the struggle ourselves and
long for the energetic social charge of that era.
The story, told with utter poignancy by the veteran
“anti-war GIs,” has been grossly silenced.
“We truly believed what would stop that
war was when the soldiers stopped fighting”
(Ron McMahan, U.S. Navy). GIs demonstrated on
the streets of the United States, rallied on military
bases, and refused orders on battlefields. They
developed hundreds of underground newspapers protesting
the war and a pirate radio station broadcast from
Saigon. In San Francisco military activists employed
the very tactics of the U.S. government in Vietnam,
leafleting, and hired a private plane to drop
information over bases about demonstrations. At
the end of the war veterans congregated in Washington
to throw their medals on the steps of the Capitol
Building.
How does such a vibrant element within the bitter
history of the Vietnam War become a non-existent
part of the past?
Government forces sought to squelch the movement
from its inception. Activist GIs were imprisoned
for organizing meetings, thousands had to retreat
to exile, and many were killed. The legacy of
the anti-war GIs became replaced with the image
of the “spat upon vet” and suddenly
activists were replaced with victims. The film
carefully dissects this transformation of our
past.
SIR! NO SIR! liberates 30 years of gagged voices
in a disturbing example of how history is written,
or rewritten.
www.sirnosir.com
Lara Catone, April 25, 2006
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