The War at Home

original title:
The War at Home
other titles:
Vietnam - The War at Home
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100 min. , color
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plot synopsis:
"Vietnam: The War at Home" is a year-by-year look at anti-war protests at the University of Michigan at Madison. The viewer gets to see how the civil rights protests inspired college students to protest the Vietnam war (as early as 1964!), how groups like the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW - still operating) formed to guide the student protests, and the reaction of society: cops swarming over the campus, politicians calling them "Un-American", Johnson's "truth groups" spreading pro-war propaganda, the Kent State shootings, etc. The film shows that hippies and protestors were not one and the same, and how progressive Madison, Wisconsin is ("The Progressive" magazine is still based there.). The whole story of what went on at the UMM is told, including the formation of a small vigilante group called the "New Year's Gang" whose member Karl Amstrong blew up a Pentagon-funded mathematics research building, burned down the campus Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) center, and dropped a dud bomb on a nearby munitions plant in the early seventies. One student took the rap and was sentenced to twenty years. He was released a year after the film was made.
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The film is considered a standard documentary on a once-controversial subject combining old footage and interviews.
Won a Special Jury Prize at the now defunct U.S. Film Festival and was nominated for "Best Documentary" at the 1979 Academy Awards.
availability:
VHS NTSC, DVD