Artists
Keisha Luce, Artist
Sum and Parts is a documentary sculpture installation exploring the personal and cultural history of the use of Agent Orange during the Vietnam War, and in a wider sense the long-term ecological and social costs of warfare. The installation consists of six figurative sculptures, created using life-molding techniques, of second and third generation Agent Orange victims in Vietnam.
http://www.sumandparts.com/
Facebook fan page
Sum and Parts is a documentary sculpture installation exploring the personal and cultural history of the use of Agent Orange during the Vietnam War, and in a wider sense the long-term ecological and social costs of warfare. The installation consists of six figurative sculptures, created using life-molding techniques, of second and third generation Agent Orange victims in Vietnam.
http://www.sumandparts.com/
Facebook fan page
Chris Wubbena, (USA)
“speaking while listening” is an expression of personal and shared confusions resulting from the lasting effects of the Viet Nam/American War era. While addressing the destructive capabilities of war both physically and emotionally, the exhibition focuses on the constructive potential of generational and cultural collaboration. In order to create new paths for understanding, the exhibition asks the viewer to look, listen, and learn how our worlds past and present are intertwined within debris of memory and emotion.
The exhibition is an environment of visual discussions pertaining to the effects of war, using visual and physical meanings to create relationships between objects, raw materials, and multimedia processes. The reconstruction of personal relationships are echoed and sorted throughout the physical space of the gallery in initial attempts to come to terms with the teenager as soldier, the veteran as parent, the human as enemy, and the enemy as friend.
“speaking while listening” is an ongoing project and changing exhibition. The subject matter is vast and complex as it spans generations and continents of people sifting through violent pasts. However, by continuously sorting through the past we can learn more about ourselves and each other. We can find loved ones buried beneath sorrow. We can find neighbors locked behind uncomfortable questions. We can find new friends miles away, beyond miscommunications and misunderstandings. Or we can find our father where we never knew he was, in a place by himself, sorting through what was while missing what is. We can grow relationships into a stronger world of understanding.
This installation is about being honest with our past in order to create something better for our collective future. I have found throughout this project that it is important to speak your mind, to stand up for what you believe in. But I have also found that it is equally important to listen, to try to understand other various points of view. We, as human beings, have such varied personal histories and we need to listen to each other and learn from each other so that we can help and enjoy each other. But to do all of this, we must continue speaking while listening.
Chris Wubbena Facebook Page
The exhibition is an environment of visual discussions pertaining to the effects of war, using visual and physical meanings to create relationships between objects, raw materials, and multimedia processes. The reconstruction of personal relationships are echoed and sorted throughout the physical space of the gallery in initial attempts to come to terms with the teenager as soldier, the veteran as parent, the human as enemy, and the enemy as friend.
“speaking while listening” is an ongoing project and changing exhibition. The subject matter is vast and complex as it spans generations and continents of people sifting through violent pasts. However, by continuously sorting through the past we can learn more about ourselves and each other. We can find loved ones buried beneath sorrow. We can find neighbors locked behind uncomfortable questions. We can find new friends miles away, beyond miscommunications and misunderstandings. Or we can find our father where we never knew he was, in a place by himself, sorting through what was while missing what is. We can grow relationships into a stronger world of understanding.
This installation is about being honest with our past in order to create something better for our collective future. I have found throughout this project that it is important to speak your mind, to stand up for what you believe in. But I have also found that it is equally important to listen, to try to understand other various points of view. We, as human beings, have such varied personal histories and we need to listen to each other and learn from each other so that we can help and enjoy each other. But to do all of this, we must continue speaking while listening.
Chris Wubbena Facebook Page
Curt Bozif
Number 1, 2009, oil on canvas, 57 x 32 inches
Born in 1982 in St. Louis, Missouri to a working class family, Curt Bozif studied painting and art history at the Kansas City Art Institute and received his BFA in 2006. In 2008 Bozif earned his MFA from the department of Art Theory and Practice at Northwestern University. Currently Bozif resides in Chicago where he keeps a studio.
The work I've been doing for the past two years has been preoccupied by the fact that I am my father's son. It's a fact that, despite its banality, still inspires curiosity and wonder on my part and at times ambivalence and a deep confusion. It's a story really, and I am its storyteller. But, it's a story that's relevance I'm constantly struggling with. It's my wager that if my story is about more than just my father and I, it's about America.
It's a meditation on a vanishing narrative about fathers and sons and a way of life. If there's a reason for what I'm doing to be taken seriously, it might be because the same things that preoccupy my thoughts and my work now, come from the same place as the things we as a changing nation have been attempting to work through, deny, and represent for years.
Curt is currently working on a book, "Dear Karen."
You can find out more by visiting his website www.curtbozif.com
Interview with Curt Bozif
The work I've been doing for the past two years has been preoccupied by the fact that I am my father's son. It's a fact that, despite its banality, still inspires curiosity and wonder on my part and at times ambivalence and a deep confusion. It's a story really, and I am its storyteller. But, it's a story that's relevance I'm constantly struggling with. It's my wager that if my story is about more than just my father and I, it's about America.
It's a meditation on a vanishing narrative about fathers and sons and a way of life. If there's a reason for what I'm doing to be taken seriously, it might be because the same things that preoccupy my thoughts and my work now, come from the same place as the things we as a changing nation have been attempting to work through, deny, and represent for years.
Curt is currently working on a book, "Dear Karen."
You can find out more by visiting his website www.curtbozif.com
Interview with Curt Bozif
Julie Thi Underhill
Born in the U.S. in 1976, Julie Thi Underhill began photographing in 1994. She commenced in 1999 a series on Việt Nam, continued in 2001 while studying the war that joined her Vietnamese Cham-French mother and American father. For Crossing Fire, a forthcoming documentary of postwar healing discussions between Vietnamese and Salvadoran women (Sisters Meeting Sisters delegates,) in 2002 Julie photographed and interviewed women combatants, organizers, and survivors of war in El Salvador. Julie’s oral history of Robert Cagle, an American veteran of the war in Việt Nam, is included in Alex Bloom’s Takin it to the Streets A Sixties Reader. Julie’s war dreams memoir poetry is included in Maxine Hong Kingston’s Veterans of War Veterans of Peace.
During her 2005-06 fellowship with the Joiner Center for the Study of War & Social Consequences at UMass-Boston, Julie examined the cultural survival of the Cham, whose 1,500-year-old Austronesian kingdom preceded the Vietnamese. This work continued a decade of research into the origins and syncretic traditions of her maternal ancestry. In Spring 2006, with family, Julie returned to Phước Lập, Việt Nam to photograph, film, & participate in her Cham grandmother’s Second Burial. In Fall 2007, Julie began her Master’s and Ph.D. in Comparative Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley, where she focuses upon the intersections between Cham historical memory, gender and ethnic identities, spiritual beliefs, and acculturation. She received her Master of Arts in 2009 and continues on towards her doctorate. As a Chancellor’s Fellow, she’ll also finish editing Second Burial and continue to make and exhibit her photographs and to write memoir essays and poetry.
Although Julie’s series also include portraits and landscapes from El Salvador, Malawi, Mexico, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States, her most intimate and cherished work is from her mother’s homeland. The following Cham family portraits, from Julie’s first and most recent visits to Việt Nam, include her ailing grandmother, her mother Ly’s tearful reunion with family after 31 years apart, and events of Thi Oai’s sacred reburial.
For a forthcoming special edition on Southeast Asians in the Diaspora, the editors comment in the introduction, “In her portfolio of black and white images of the Cham, an ethnic minority in Việt Nam, Julie Thi Underhill’s elegiac photographs gesture toward the identifications, the desires, and the love that often underlie the encounter with the ruins of past wars in the present.”
http://www.jthiunderhill.com
Maya Weinninger
Maya Weinninger is an international multimedia documentarian based in New York. She received a BFA (specialization photography) and certificate in International Development from Seattle University. She is currently achieving her master’s degree in Visual and Interactive Communications from the S.I. Newhouse School of Communications at Syracuse University.
She has photographed for Catholic Relief Services of India and UNICEF, as well as other nongovernmental organizations. She has a strong interest in public health and international development with a focus on developing and conflict torn nations. She has lived in Asia, as well as traveled solo extensively in developing countries.
Her Film http://www.thebloodofbhutan.com/
Photography: http://www.mayaweinninger.com
She has photographed for Catholic Relief Services of India and UNICEF, as well as other nongovernmental organizations. She has a strong interest in public health and international development with a focus on developing and conflict torn nations. She has lived in Asia, as well as traveled solo extensively in developing countries.
Her Film http://www.thebloodofbhutan.com/
Photography: http://www.mayaweinninger.com
Jeremy Hogan
A woman points out the name of a loved one whose name is on a traveling Vietnam memorial. Porterville California had the highest per capita of casualties for any town in America during the war. 1989.
www.jeremyhogan.com
Website for his Dad http://www.searchingfortheblues.com
Photographer Jeremy Hogan of Bloomington was awarded a grant to help fund a series of photographic portraits of Vietnam War veterans of the 1st Squadron, 9th Cavalry, which is the unit his father served with from 1969-1971.
Read
In Defense of Documentary Photography
Jamaica Morz
Jamaica Morz, Sculpture and Photography
MorzArts' "Originals" are trademarks of their harmonious blend of free form sculpture and dramatic imagery. Robert and Jamaica manifest their creations as an expression of who they are...creating from passion and for simple enjoyment. While their individual styles range from surrealistic journeys to portraits of realism; from conceptual inspirations to something-in-between, one thing is certain...the Morz collective imagination produces works that are alluring, bold and unpretentious.
Morzart Originals
MorzArts' "Originals" are trademarks of their harmonious blend of free form sculpture and dramatic imagery. Robert and Jamaica manifest their creations as an expression of who they are...creating from passion and for simple enjoyment. While their individual styles range from surrealistic journeys to portraits of realism; from conceptual inspirations to something-in-between, one thing is certain...the Morz collective imagination produces works that are alluring, bold and unpretentious.
Morzart Originals
Lauren Levato
"From the Bodies of Dead Horses" graphite drawing on Bristol board, 2011
Lauren Levato
About 9 years ago my dad had quintuple bypass. It wasn't his heart that killed him last August, but his heart trouble really stuck with me and my imagination. While he was undergoing surgery I kept myself from going crazy - and got a good... laugh - out of imagining that when they opened up his chest a thousand bats would fly out. Or oodles of Gerber daisies with their big, sunny faces would SPRONG right out of his chest and hit the surgeon in the face. That imagery never left me and that coupled with the long-ago but deeply held myth that wasps used to spring from the bodies of dead horses I did this drawing.
As well as being a visual artist, Lauren is also a writer, editor, and educator. Marriage Bones is her first collection of poetry, a chapbook published by Fractal Edge Press.
Writer, artist, and feminist activist Lauren Levato is literary editor for
Ink & Ashes :: a journal of the senses and editor for PISTIL.
Her writing has appeared in after hours, The Pedestal Magazine, Poetry Midwest, and Wicked Alice. She holds degrees in professional writing and women's studies from Purdue University and studied political journalism at Georgetown University. Her awards include a poetry fellowship from the Vermont Studio Center.
SEE a short film by her friend, Chris Hefner: HERE!!
http://laurenlevato.com
About 9 years ago my dad had quintuple bypass. It wasn't his heart that killed him last August, but his heart trouble really stuck with me and my imagination. While he was undergoing surgery I kept myself from going crazy - and got a good... laugh - out of imagining that when they opened up his chest a thousand bats would fly out. Or oodles of Gerber daisies with their big, sunny faces would SPRONG right out of his chest and hit the surgeon in the face. That imagery never left me and that coupled with the long-ago but deeply held myth that wasps used to spring from the bodies of dead horses I did this drawing.
As well as being a visual artist, Lauren is also a writer, editor, and educator. Marriage Bones is her first collection of poetry, a chapbook published by Fractal Edge Press.
Writer, artist, and feminist activist Lauren Levato is literary editor for
Ink & Ashes :: a journal of the senses and editor for PISTIL.
Her writing has appeared in after hours, The Pedestal Magazine, Poetry Midwest, and Wicked Alice. She holds degrees in professional writing and women's studies from Purdue University and studied political journalism at Georgetown University. Her awards include a poetry fellowship from the Vermont Studio Center.
SEE a short film by her friend, Chris Hefner: HERE!!
http://laurenlevato.com
Playwrights and Performance Art
Ka Mate, Ka Ora
Written by Helen Pearse-Otene of New Zealand
Directed by Jim Moriarty and Alan Scott
Ka Mate Ka Ora looks at the Vietnam War from the perspective of a contemporary small town Mâori family, and reaches back even further to Ngato Toa's famous warrior chief Te Rauparaha, whose even better-known haka, 'Ka mate, ka mate, ka ora, ka ora', celebrates the triumph of life over death. Four Vietnam veterans and a gang of disaffected youths form the other two points of the 'fighting man' triangle.
Written by Helen Pearse-Otene of New Zealand
Directed by Jim Moriarty and Alan Scott
Ka Mate Ka Ora looks at the Vietnam War from the perspective of a contemporary small town Mâori family, and reaches back even further to Ngato Toa's famous warrior chief Te Rauparaha, whose even better-known haka, 'Ka mate, ka mate, ka ora, ka ora', celebrates the triumph of life over death. Four Vietnam veterans and a gang of disaffected youths form the other two points of the 'fighting man' triangle.
Julie Marie Wyatt (USA), "Welcome Home, Jenny Sutter"
The basic story about a soldier carrying physical and emotional wounds trying to return to society, is as current and timeless as it gets. The specific treatment here is that before the main character Jenny Sutter can tackle all the “issues” of returning home, she finds herself in a kind of halfway makeshift community of misfits, cast offs, and eccentrics who care for her wounded soul and help her heal. Described as an “edgy and poignant drama,” Welcome Home, Jenny Sutter explores the human element that is as important as the clinical and medicinal in the healing process. (link)
Interview Here
Julie Marie Myatt
Welcome Home, Jenny Sutter (excerpt, video)
Feb 19 - June 20 | Angus Bowmer Theatre
Directed by: Jessica Thebus
The basic story about a soldier carrying physical and emotional wounds trying to return to society, is as current and timeless as it gets. The specific treatment here is that before the main character Jenny Sutter can tackle all the “issues” of returning home, she finds herself in a kind of halfway makeshift community of misfits, cast offs, and eccentrics who care for her wounded soul and help her heal. Described as an “edgy and poignant drama,” Welcome Home, Jenny Sutter explores the human element that is as important as the clinical and medicinal in the healing process. (link)
Interview Here
Julie Marie Myatt
Welcome Home, Jenny Sutter (excerpt, video)
Feb 19 - June 20 | Angus Bowmer Theatre
Directed by: Jessica Thebus
Kate Mulvany
"I was very nervous about writing this play. It meant going to a lot of dark places but it helped that I’m very close to my family." -Kate Mulvany
Based on a true sKtory, The Seed reflects upon the 30 year family reunion of Vietnam veteran Danny, his father Brian, an ex-IRA soldier, and Danny's daughter Rose. As the celebration crumbles, the lines between truth and lies, war and peace and family and foe become increasingly blurred and the home becomes an explosive battleground. The Seed is a gripping and candid story about finding new life amongst the rubble of old wars, written by Kate Mulvany. The Seed played to rapturous audiences at the celebrated Belvoir St Theatre in Sydney and received a 2007 Sydney Theatre Award for Best Independent Production.
(Link)
Kate Mulvany graduated with a BA from Curtin University. She is an actress who has played lead roles with major Australian theatre companies as well as appearing on TV and in film. Her other plays include: Father O Friendly, Derek Drives a Datsun, Vaseline Lollies, Blood and Bone (Winner of Naked Theatre Co's “Write Now"! Award), Naked Ambition, Storytime, The Danger Age—which was shortlisted for the STC's Patrick White Award and won the 2004 Philip Parsons Award—and Somewhere which opened Railway Street Theatre's new venue in 2005.
TD Mitchell (USA), Playwright
Ms. Mitchell has worked in the theater in various capacities for many years, but only recently as a playwright. Other writing includes live event scripts and speechwriting for various nonprofit, human rights and philanthropic organizations. In 2006, Mitchell participated in the Writer's Workshop at the Joiner Center for the Study of War and Social Consequences. The first act of BEYOND THE 17th PARALLEL (originally titled OUR PATRIOTS' SONS & DAUGHTERS) was presented at EST's Octoberfest as a work-in-progress. Mitchell's site-specific short play, THE CROWD, was produced in a rooftop swimming pool in midtown Manhattan (Word of Mouth). Nothing has been the same since.
BEYOND THE 17TH PARALLEL By T. D. MITCHELL An isolated retreat in the Pacific Northwest. Four decades after surviving the horrors of Vietnam, six veterans of the Fourth Infantry “Ivy Division” reunite. There’s a lot of catching up to do. And there are wounds that have never healed, wounds that hurt anew now that America is again at war. Will the brotherhood forged in the jungles of Southeast Asia endure? The Iraq war creates a crisis of faith in brotherhood, country, and memory after years away from the physical battlefield. A drama for our time exploring the long-term effects of war on the people who fight them.
TD MITCHELL is working as a writer for the TV series, "Army Wives".
Ms. Mitchell has worked in the theater in various capacities for many years, but only recently as a playwright. Other writing includes live event scripts and speechwriting for various nonprofit, human rights and philanthropic organizations. In 2006, Mitchell participated in the Writer's Workshop at the Joiner Center for the Study of War and Social Consequences. The first act of BEYOND THE 17th PARALLEL (originally titled OUR PATRIOTS' SONS & DAUGHTERS) was presented at EST's Octoberfest as a work-in-progress. Mitchell's site-specific short play, THE CROWD, was produced in a rooftop swimming pool in midtown Manhattan (Word of Mouth). Nothing has been the same since.
BEYOND THE 17TH PARALLEL By T. D. MITCHELL An isolated retreat in the Pacific Northwest. Four decades after surviving the horrors of Vietnam, six veterans of the Fourth Infantry “Ivy Division” reunite. There’s a lot of catching up to do. And there are wounds that have never healed, wounds that hurt anew now that America is again at war. Will the brotherhood forged in the jungles of Southeast Asia endure? The Iraq war creates a crisis of faith in brotherhood, country, and memory after years away from the physical battlefield. A drama for our time exploring the long-term effects of war on the people who fight them.
TD MITCHELL is working as a writer for the TV series, "Army Wives".
authors/journalists
Andrew Lam Almost three decades ago, my family and I left Vietnam inside a C-130 cargo plane full of weeping refugees. I remember watching a Saigon in smoke, then a green mass of land giving way to a hazy green sea. I was eleven years old — too young to realize that I was witnessing a significant historical moment. For the first time in her embattled history, a history alleged to be 4,000 years old, the end of a war had resulted in an unprecedented mass exodus.
Read more at PBS, My Journey Home
Andrew Lam is an editor and co-founder of New America Media, an association of over two thousand ethnic media outlets in America. His essays have appeared in dozens of newspapers and magazines across the country, and his short stories are anthologized widely. Followed by a film crew back to his homeland, Vietnam, he was featured in the documentary My Journey Home, which aired nationwide on PBS in 2004. His book Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora won a PEN American Beyond Margins award in 2006. Lam currently lives in San Francisco.
Biography
Andrew is a son of a South Vietnamese General
Andrew is currently on tour for his new book "East Eats West: Writing in Two Hemispheres"
Read more at PBS, My Journey Home
Andrew Lam is an editor and co-founder of New America Media, an association of over two thousand ethnic media outlets in America. His essays have appeared in dozens of newspapers and magazines across the country, and his short stories are anthologized widely. Followed by a film crew back to his homeland, Vietnam, he was featured in the documentary My Journey Home, which aired nationwide on PBS in 2004. His book Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora won a PEN American Beyond Margins award in 2006. Lam currently lives in San Francisco.
Biography
Andrew is a son of a South Vietnamese General
Andrew is currently on tour for his new book "East Eats West: Writing in Two Hemispheres"
Karen Spears Zacharias had her first kiss in a trailer, smoked her first and last cigarette in a trailer, asked Jesus into her heart on bended knee in a trailer, fell madly in love in a trailer (a couple of different times), and gave birth to her firstborn child in a trailer.
Karen is a former crime beat reporter, wife, mom, Tennessee Volunteer, Georgia Peach, Beaver graduate of Oregon State University, sister in faith, water moccasin bite survivor and 25th Infantry Gold Star daughter. Her commentary has been featured in the New York Times, Newsweek, and National Public Radio. Karen and husband, Tim, plan to raise any grandchildren in a double-wide trailer with a plasma TV on an acre of land in Point Clear, Alabama.
She blogs at http://www.karenzach.com/
Karen is a former crime beat reporter, wife, mom, Tennessee Volunteer, Georgia Peach, Beaver graduate of Oregon State University, sister in faith, water moccasin bite survivor and 25th Infantry Gold Star daughter. Her commentary has been featured in the New York Times, Newsweek, and National Public Radio. Karen and husband, Tim, plan to raise any grandchildren in a double-wide trailer with a plasma TV on an acre of land in Point Clear, Alabama.
She blogs at http://www.karenzach.com/
Danielle Trussoni, "Falling Through the Earth"
I wrote my memoir, Falling Through the Earth, about my relationship with my father, who was a tunnel rat in Vietnam in 1968, while I was living in Sofia, Bulgaria. All of the people who would appear in the book lived thousands of miles away, and for this I was thankful: I wanted to write from my point of view, drawing on my personal vision of family history and events and conversations. The few times that I spoke with family members—I tried comparing memories with my sister over the phone—only seemed to fragment the voice I was developing for the book, and so I kept this kind of research to a minimum...(more at Slate Magazine)
"On the Home Front, War & Families"
See video of Danielle
I wrote my memoir, Falling Through the Earth, about my relationship with my father, who was a tunnel rat in Vietnam in 1968, while I was living in Sofia, Bulgaria. All of the people who would appear in the book lived thousands of miles away, and for this I was thankful: I wanted to write from my point of view, drawing on my personal vision of family history and events and conversations. The few times that I spoke with family members—I tried comparing memories with my sister over the phone—only seemed to fragment the voice I was developing for the book, and so I kept this kind of research to a minimum...(more at Slate Magazine)
"On the Home Front, War & Families"
See video of Danielle
Columnist
Nicole Neroulias, "Return to Vietnam"
http://vietnam.lohudblogs.com/
Nicole Neroulias grew up in Briarcliff Manor, NY, and graduated from Cornell University and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. In November 2007, she traveled with her father, retired Col. Andonios Neroulias, to Vietnam with a group of other veterans from the Lower Hudson Valley, an experience she chronicled in The Journal New "Return to Vietnam" series. Nicole previously covered religion and city news in Cyprus, Connecticut and California, where she earned several fellowships and prizes, including a national Religion Newswriters Association award. She joined The Journal News in early 2007 and also teaches journalism at Columbia.
http://vietnam.lohudblogs.com/
Nicole Neroulias grew up in Briarcliff Manor, NY, and graduated from Cornell University and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. In November 2007, she traveled with her father, retired Col. Andonios Neroulias, to Vietnam with a group of other veterans from the Lower Hudson Valley, an experience she chronicled in The Journal New "Return to Vietnam" series. Nicole previously covered religion and city news in Cyprus, Connecticut and California, where she earned several fellowships and prizes, including a national Religion Newswriters Association award. She joined The Journal News in early 2007 and also teaches journalism at Columbia.
film
Donna Musil
The first documentary about growing up military.
t's hard to imagine a military BRAT'S childhood. Moving from base to base around the world, they are at home everywhere - and nowhere. There are 1.2 million children being raised in the military today. An estimated 15 million Americans are former BRATS. They include actors Jessica Alba and Robert Duvall, Senator John McCain, and basketball star Shaquille O'Neal.
BRATS is the first cinematic glimpse into a global subculture whose journey to adulthood is a high-octane mixture of incredible excitement and enormous pain. Make no mistake - BRATS is not about the U.S. military - it's about their children, who grow up in a paradox that is idealistic and authoritarian, privileged and perilous, supportive and stifling - all at the same time. Their passports say "United States," but they're really citizens of the world.
Singer/songwriter and Air Force brat Kris Kristofferson leads us through the heart of their experiences, sharing intimate memories with fellow BRATS, including General Norman Schwarzkopf and author Mary Edwards Wertsch, whose ground-breaking book, Military Brats: Legacies of Childhood Inside the Fortress, was one of the seminal inspirations for this film. Their stories reveal the peculiar landscape of their childhood, the culture that binds them together, and the power it exerts over their adult lives.
A seven-year work of passion by independent filmmaker (Daughter of a Vietnam Veteran) Donna Musil, BRATS features rare archival footage, home movies and private photographs from post-war Japan, Germany, and Vietnam.
The first documentary about growing up military.
t's hard to imagine a military BRAT'S childhood. Moving from base to base around the world, they are at home everywhere - and nowhere. There are 1.2 million children being raised in the military today. An estimated 15 million Americans are former BRATS. They include actors Jessica Alba and Robert Duvall, Senator John McCain, and basketball star Shaquille O'Neal.
BRATS is the first cinematic glimpse into a global subculture whose journey to adulthood is a high-octane mixture of incredible excitement and enormous pain. Make no mistake - BRATS is not about the U.S. military - it's about their children, who grow up in a paradox that is idealistic and authoritarian, privileged and perilous, supportive and stifling - all at the same time. Their passports say "United States," but they're really citizens of the world.
Singer/songwriter and Air Force brat Kris Kristofferson leads us through the heart of their experiences, sharing intimate memories with fellow BRATS, including General Norman Schwarzkopf and author Mary Edwards Wertsch, whose ground-breaking book, Military Brats: Legacies of Childhood Inside the Fortress, was one of the seminal inspirations for this film. Their stories reveal the peculiar landscape of their childhood, the culture that binds them together, and the power it exerts over their adult lives.
A seven-year work of passion by independent filmmaker (Daughter of a Vietnam Veteran) Donna Musil, BRATS features rare archival footage, home movies and private photographs from post-war Japan, Germany, and Vietnam.
Tom Bissell
Tom Bissell is the author of Chasing the Sea (named by Conde Nast Traveler as one of the 86 greatest travel books of all time), God Lives in St. Petersburg (winner of the Rome Prize), and The Father of All Things. He is a contributing editor to Harper's Magazine and the Virginia Quarterly Review, and his work has appeared in many magazines, including The New Republic, The New York Times Magazine, and Granta. He currently lives in Las Vegas, where he is a fellow at UNLV's Black Mountain Institute.
AFTER THE FALL follows two American journalists on their trip to Vietnam for the 30th anniversary of the fall of Saigon and explores the profound impact of the war on their fathers.
Sharing a common interest in Vietnam, Tom Bissell — the son of John Bissell, a US Marine Captain who served in the war — and Morgan Meis — the son of Bill Meis, a draft resister who moved to Canada to protest the war— return to Saigon to attend the anniversary ceremonies with the formerly black-listed Vice President of South Vietnam.
Unbeknownst to them, their activities are being monitored by the Vietnamese Secret Police, and after meeting with a "subversive" contemporary artist in Hanoi, Tom And Morgan get an all-too-real glimpse into the experiences that weighed so heavily on their fathers, with their own encounter ending in a minor international incident.
Featuring interviews with both fathers and sons, AFTER THE FALL offers views from both sides of the conflict and two generations' perceptions of the war and its legacy.
http://afterthefallmovie.com/
Tom Bissell is the author of Chasing the Sea (named by Conde Nast Traveler as one of the 86 greatest travel books of all time), God Lives in St. Petersburg (winner of the Rome Prize), and The Father of All Things. He is a contributing editor to Harper's Magazine and the Virginia Quarterly Review, and his work has appeared in many magazines, including The New Republic, The New York Times Magazine, and Granta. He currently lives in Las Vegas, where he is a fellow at UNLV's Black Mountain Institute.
AFTER THE FALL follows two American journalists on their trip to Vietnam for the 30th anniversary of the fall of Saigon and explores the profound impact of the war on their fathers.
Sharing a common interest in Vietnam, Tom Bissell — the son of John Bissell, a US Marine Captain who served in the war — and Morgan Meis — the son of Bill Meis, a draft resister who moved to Canada to protest the war— return to Saigon to attend the anniversary ceremonies with the formerly black-listed Vice President of South Vietnam.
Unbeknownst to them, their activities are being monitored by the Vietnamese Secret Police, and after meeting with a "subversive" contemporary artist in Hanoi, Tom And Morgan get an all-too-real glimpse into the experiences that weighed so heavily on their fathers, with their own encounter ending in a minor international incident.
Featuring interviews with both fathers and sons, AFTER THE FALL offers views from both sides of the conflict and two generations' perceptions of the war and its legacy.
http://afterthefallmovie.com/
Film
DAUGHTER FROM DANANG A heartbreaking documentary that upsets your expectations of happily-ever-afters, Daughter from Danang is a riveting emotional drama of longing, identity, and the personal legacy of war. To all outward appearances, Heidi is the proverbial “all-American girl”, hailing from small town Pulaski, Tenn. But her birth name was Mai Thi Hiep. Born in Danang, Vietnam in 1968, she’s the mixed-race daughter of an American serviceman and a Vietnamese woman. Fearing for her daughter’s safety at the war’s end, Hiep’s mother sent her to the U.S. on “Operation Babylift”, a Ford administration plan to relocate orphans and mixed-race children to the U.S. for adoption before they fell victim to a frighteningly uncertain future in Vietnam after the Americans pulled out. Mother and daughter would know nothing about each other for 22 years.
Now, as if by a miracle, they are reunited in Danang. But what seems like the cue for a happy ending is anything but. Heidi and her Vietnamese relatives find themselves caught in a confusing clash of cultures and at the mercy of conflicting emotions that will change their lives forever. Through intimate and sometimes excruciating moments, Daughter from Danang profoundly shows how wide the chasms of cultural difference and how deep the wounds of war can run--even within one family.
http://www.daughterfromdanang.com
Watch "Daughter from Danang"
Now, as if by a miracle, they are reunited in Danang. But what seems like the cue for a happy ending is anything but. Heidi and her Vietnamese relatives find themselves caught in a confusing clash of cultures and at the mercy of conflicting emotions that will change their lives forever. Through intimate and sometimes excruciating moments, Daughter from Danang profoundly shows how wide the chasms of cultural difference and how deep the wounds of war can run--even within one family.
http://www.daughterfromdanang.com
Watch "Daughter from Danang"
Tracy Droz Tragos, "Be Good, Smile Pretty"
Be Good, Smile Pretty Directed by Tracy Droz Tragos
A powerfully moving, personal exploration of a grief for the father she never knew, this award-winning film chronicles Tracy Droz Tragos' heart-wrenching journey to understand and cope with a loss shared by the estimated 20,000 Americans whose fathers were killed in Vietnam. Weaving emotionally compelling interviews with home movies, stock footage and family photos, Tragos travels from Selma, Alabama, to the U.S. Senate in search of her father's Naval Academy roommates and war buddies, each of whom has been silently mourning his death and come to remember her father's life in their own way. Along the way, Tragos uncovers a 30-year-old mystery, as she comes to know her father as a man, untangled from the memory of a war that wounded a nation. And while some discoveries are almost too difficult to bear, it is ultimately the truth that allows her, and her entire family, to understand and move forward.
Find more at Independent Lens, PBS
Be Good, Smile Pretty Directed by Tracy Droz Tragos
A powerfully moving, personal exploration of a grief for the father she never knew, this award-winning film chronicles Tracy Droz Tragos' heart-wrenching journey to understand and cope with a loss shared by the estimated 20,000 Americans whose fathers were killed in Vietnam. Weaving emotionally compelling interviews with home movies, stock footage and family photos, Tragos travels from Selma, Alabama, to the U.S. Senate in search of her father's Naval Academy roommates and war buddies, each of whom has been silently mourning his death and come to remember her father's life in their own way. Along the way, Tragos uncovers a 30-year-old mystery, as she comes to know her father as a man, untangled from the memory of a war that wounded a nation. And while some discoveries are almost too difficult to bear, it is ultimately the truth that allows her, and her entire family, to understand and move forward.
Find more at Independent Lens, PBS
John Hulme, Director, "Unknown Soldier: Searching for a Father"
From HBO Documentary Films:
On June 30, 1969, Lieutenant Jack Hulme of the U.S. Marine Corps was killed in Vietnam, just days before he was to leave the country and see his newborn son for the first time. Thirty years later, John Hulme - the son Jack never met - decided to uncover the truth about the father he never knew.
"Unknown Soldier" Trailer
From HBO Documentary Films:
On June 30, 1969, Lieutenant Jack Hulme of the U.S. Marine Corps was killed in Vietnam, just days before he was to leave the country and see his newborn son for the first time. Thirty years later, John Hulme - the son Jack never met - decided to uncover the truth about the father he never knew.
"Unknown Soldier" Trailer
Activism
Heather Morris Bowser
Heather (Morris) Bowser was born in 1972 to William and Sharon Morris. Heather was born two months premature with multiple birth defects. When she was born, she weighed 3 lbs. 4 oz. Her birth defects included a missing right leg below the knee, her left big toe, and several fingers on both hands. She learned to walk using a prosthesis at a young age....
Please read more about Heather here at www.agentorangespeaker.com
Please read more about Heather here at www.agentorangespeaker.com
Susan Hammond
My dad served two tours in Vietnam, i am old enough to remember his second tour and the war in general so I visited Viet Nam for the first time in 1991 to see the place for myself. As a result my life took a 180 and i have been working in the not-for-profit sector involved with Viet Nam, Laos and Cambodia since the mid 90s. I started my own not-for-profit organization three years ago called the War Legacies Project that works to foster greater understanding about the long term health, environmental, psychological, and socio-economic impacts of war at home and abroad and works to mitigate those impacts. More info at htttp://www.warlegacies.org.
The War Legacies Project is a not-for-profit organization based in Vermont that focuses on the long-term impacts of war to develop a fuller understanding of the costs of war, increase public understanding of these costs, foster public dialogue about the impacts of war and conduct programs that help mitigate the impacts of war at home and abroad.
At the moment our main focus of work is addressing the long term health and environmental consequences of the use of Agent Orange and other herbicides during the Vietnam war. Much of our work focuses on the impacts of these herbicides in Vietnam. However, we also address their impacts on US veterans and veterans of the other ally forces and on communities where the herbicides were manufactured, stored and tested.
WLP also collaborates with the Legacies of War and other organizations working to raise awareness and encourage more humanitarian assistance for the on-going impacts of cluster munitions and other explosive remnants of the war.
WLP began as an autonomous, self-sufficient program of the Fund for Reconciliation and Development (FRD) a not-for-profit organization that has been working to foster relations between the US and Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia for the past 23 years. In October 2008, WLP filed for tax-exempt status from the IRS and is currently awaiting its decision. In the meantime, FRD continues to serve as WLP's fiscal agent.
The War Legacies Project is a not-for-profit organization based in Vermont that focuses on the long-term impacts of war to develop a fuller understanding of the costs of war, increase public understanding of these costs, foster public dialogue about the impacts of war and conduct programs that help mitigate the impacts of war at home and abroad.
At the moment our main focus of work is addressing the long term health and environmental consequences of the use of Agent Orange and other herbicides during the Vietnam war. Much of our work focuses on the impacts of these herbicides in Vietnam. However, we also address their impacts on US veterans and veterans of the other ally forces and on communities where the herbicides were manufactured, stored and tested.
WLP also collaborates with the Legacies of War and other organizations working to raise awareness and encourage more humanitarian assistance for the on-going impacts of cluster munitions and other explosive remnants of the war.
WLP began as an autonomous, self-sufficient program of the Fund for Reconciliation and Development (FRD) a not-for-profit organization that has been working to foster relations between the US and Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia for the past 23 years. In October 2008, WLP filed for tax-exempt status from the IRS and is currently awaiting its decision. In the meantime, FRD continues to serve as WLP's fiscal agent.
Thuy Smith, Thuy Smith International Outreach
"During my fathers three years in Vietnam as an American soldier, he met and married my mother. I was born in 1972 and when I was eight months old he brought us both to America." Thuy Smith
Thuy Smith International Outreach is a non-profit 501(c) 3 organization. The organization is founded on the deeply held belief that human life is infinitely valuable.
The values that shape this organization are the abilities of each individual, the dignity present in every person, and the importance of the quality of human life.
We are dedicated to providing direct aid to improve the quality of life for children and the most under-served populations in Vietnam. We are also committed in our role as a Vietnam Veteran Liaison and toward the healing of Vietnam Veterans. We also educate and advocate for people in recovery from alcohol & other drug addictions / issues; addressing the shame & stigma for those who suffer.
http://www.thuysmithinternationaloutreach.org
"During my fathers three years in Vietnam as an American soldier, he met and married my mother. I was born in 1972 and when I was eight months old he brought us both to America." Thuy Smith
Thuy Smith International Outreach is a non-profit 501(c) 3 organization. The organization is founded on the deeply held belief that human life is infinitely valuable.
The values that shape this organization are the abilities of each individual, the dignity present in every person, and the importance of the quality of human life.
We are dedicated to providing direct aid to improve the quality of life for children and the most under-served populations in Vietnam. We are also committed in our role as a Vietnam Veteran Liaison and toward the healing of Vietnam Veterans. We also educate and advocate for people in recovery from alcohol & other drug addictions / issues; addressing the shame & stigma for those who suffer.
http://www.thuysmithinternationaloutreach.org
