Film Calendar
Thursday, November 3, 2005:
The Good War and Those Who Refused to
Fight It
Thursday, January 12, 2006:
Weapons of the Spirit
Thursday, March 9, 2006
A
Force More Powerful
The
Good War and Those Who Refused to Fight It
The story of conscientious
objectors in World War II.
Produced by Judith Ehrlich & Rick Tejada-Flores
Narrated by Ed Asner
Editor: Ken Schneider
Associate Producer: Laurie Coyle
Camera: Vicente Franco
Sound: Nick Bertoni
Original Score: Barney Jones
Produced by Paradigm Productions Inc. in association with the
Independent Television Service with funding provided by the
Corporation for Public Broadcasting
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"Highly recommended.
Editor's Choice." Video Librarian
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Millions of Americans
fought for the liberation of Europe from Hitler's grip during
World War II.
Yet 40,000 Americans refused to shoulder weapons in "the
good war" because their conscience would not allow them to
kill another human being.
In the face of criticism and scorn, the men challenged the
limits of democracy in wartime. Many participated in the social
movements that transformed America in the generations that
followed. This is their story.
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Weapons
of the
Spirit
In
and around one village in Nazi-occupied France, 5,000 Jews were taken in
and sheltered--by 5,000 Christians! "Weapons of the Spirit" is
the story of a unique conspiracy of goodness, a story filmmaker Pierre
Sauvage was born to tell: he was born and protected at that time in that
singular oasis of peace--Le Chambon.
Le Chambon-sur-Lignon was a tiny Protestant
farming village in the mountains of south-central France. Defying the
Nazis and the French government that was collaborating with the Nazis, the
villagers of the area of Le Chambon provided a safe haven throughout the
war for whoever knocked on their door.
Most of the villagers were proud
descendants of the Huguenots, the first Protestants in Catholic France.
They remembered their own history of persecution, and it mattered to them.
They also read the Bible, and tried to heed the admonition to love your
neighbor as yourself.
"The responsibility of
Christians," their pastor, André Trocmé, had reminded them the day
after France surrendered to Nazi Germany, "is to resist the violence
that will be brought to bear on their consciences through the weapons of
the spirit."
There were many other uncelebrated
individual and collective acts of goodwill and righteousness throughout
the dark war years. But nowhere else did a persistent and successful moral
consensus develop on a scale approaching what happened in the area of Le
Chambon.
(description from Amazon.com)
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Elie
Wiesel, witness, author, Nobel Peace Prize laureate
"If you wish to learn what more men and women
could have done to save Jews, watch Pierre Sauvage's poignant documentary.
It is superb!"
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Segment
Descriptions
NASHVILLE-"WE
WERE WARRIORS"
Rev. James Lawson leads black college students on a campaign to
desegregate the city's downtown business district.
INDIA-DEFYING
THE CROWN Mohandas
Gandhi's famous Salt March of 1930 - during which he inspires Indians to
protest the British salt monopoly - is a turning point in the movement for
Indian independence.
SOUTH
AFRICA - FREEDOM IN OUR LIFETIME
Young activist Mkhuseli Jack leads a consumer boycott campaign against
apartheid in the black townships of the Eastern Cape Province of South
Africa.
DENMARK
- LIVING WITH THE ENEMY
During five years of Nazi occupation, Danes' noncooperation undermines the
Germans' attempt to exploit
Denmark
for food and war materiel, and rescues all but a few hundred of
Denmark
's seven thousand Jews from the Holocaust.
POLAND-"WE'VE
CAUGHT GOD BY THE ARM"
The 1980 Gdansk Shipyard strike wins Poles the right to have free trade
unions, launches the Solidarity movement, and catapults him to national
labor leader and eventually president of Poland. .
CHILE-DEFEAT
OF A DICTATOR
Overcoming a decade of paralyzing fear, Chilean copper miners trigger a
national day of protest of the dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet,
leading to years of nonviolent organizing and culminating in victory in a
plebiscite to end his rule.
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