War & Peace
Wednesday, MARCH 25TH – 2 FILMS on WAR AND PEACE (11:00 & 1 p.m.)
11:00 a.m. – “Why We Fight” (Film, 99 min.)
Eugene Jarecki takes a holistic approach to examining “what it is about our culture that engenders such a willingness – even an eagerness – to wage war.” So, why do we fight? Do we need war? Is war good business? This is the question raised in President Dwight Eisenhower’s 1961 Farewell Address when he warned Americans about the “military-industrial complex”.
Filmmaker Jarecki (”The Trials of Henry Kissinger”) was granted unparalleled Pentagon access with interviews and observations by a “who’s who” of military and Washington insiders including Senator John McCain, Gore Vidal, and Dan Rather. The film analyzes the forces – poiitical, economic, and ideological – that lead Americans to war. The film covers U.S. foreign policy from World War II to the Iraq War and the entanglement of corporate and political interests in the business of war.
Introduction and discussion with Professor Janice Greco.
Study guide Available: http://www.sonyclassics.com/whywefight/
1 p.m. – “Peace Is Every Step” (Film, 50 min.)
Classic film profiles Thich Nhat Hanh, a leading Vietnamese Zen teacher and author (Being Peace, The Miracle of Mindfulness, etc.).
Thich Nhat Hanh efforts to achieve an early peaceful end to the American war in Vietnam earned him a nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and a forty-year exile from his homeland. The film challenges us to consider what it takes to “construct peace” – on a personal level, in the family, in the community, in a nation, and in the world. Narrated by Ben Kingsley, and filmed on location in Plum Village in France, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. and shows rare archival footage from Vietnam in the 1960s.