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Sir! No sir! : a David Zeiger film

-- David Zeiger film

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In archival footage and interviews, this film tells the story of an almost forgotten fact of the Vietnam era: the war's most crucial naysayers were soldiers--in the barracks and on the front lines--the GI anti-war movement. Beginning with acts of conscience by individuals, dissatisfaction escalated with the number of conscripts. Courts-martial, destroyed careers, imprisonment in military stockades or federal penitentiaries and desertions were common. There were also pirate radio stations, underground newspapers, a modern "underground railway" that helped soldiers desert and move to Canada, coffeehouses near U.S. bases where opinions shaped and altered by first-hand experiences were shared, and groups organized around every imaginable axis, which led to anti-war sentiment among U.S. troops being recognized at the highest levels in the Pentagon. On one level, this film is a corrective to the rah-rah rhetoric about Vietnam pushed by the right wing, while undermining the popular fiction that opposition to the war came strictly from outside the military, and reversing the 20 year process of erasing the GI Movement from the collective memory of the nation and the world.

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Summary Note

In archival footage and interviews, this film tells the story of an almost forgotten fact of the Vietnam era: the war's most crucial naysayers were soldiers--in the barracks and on the front lines--the GI anti-war movement. Beginning with acts of conscience by individuals, dissatisfaction escalated with the number of conscripts. Courts-martial, destroyed careers, imprisonment in military stockades or federal penitentiaries and desertions were common. There were also pirate radio stations, underground newspapers, a modern "underground railway" that helped soldiers desert and move to Canada, coffeehouses near U.S. bases where opinions shaped and altered by first-hand experiences were shared, and groups organized around every imaginable axis, which led to anti-war sentiment among U.S. troops being recognized at the highest levels in the Pentagon. On one level, this film is a corrective to the rah-rah rhetoric about Vietnam pushed by the right wing, while undermining the popular fiction that opposition to the war came strictly from outside the military, and reversing the 20 year process of erasing the GI Movement from the collective memory of the nation and the world.

General Note

Special features: Featurettes: The American serviceman's union and Fort Dix stockade rebellion (12 min.); Carl Dix: From protest to federal prison to revolution (12 min.); Elder Halim Gullahbemi: Learning from the Vietnamese (6 min.); Jeff Sharlet and Vietnam GI (4 min.); Randy Rowland: Life in the Presidio stockade (7 min.); Keith Mather's escape (3 min.); The 9 for Peace (1 min.); Keith's scrapbook: From 9 for peace to Presidio 27 (7 min.); Joe Urgo: Behind the winter soldier investigation (8 min.); Michael Wong: In Vietnam, we were doing what the Japanese did to the Chinese in WWII (3 min.); Director David Zeiger and Sgt. Giamozzi at the Oleo Strut (6 min.); Pioneer pirate radio DJ Dave Rabbit speaks! (8 min.); The court martial of Camilo Mejia: Iraq War resister (2 min.); Cindy Sheehan and Jane Fonda on "Sir! No Sir!" (12 min.); "Only the Beginning"--Vietnam vets 'return' their medals (4 min.); Newsreel: "Summer of '68"--The Oleo Strut (7 min.); Rita Martinson's "Soldier, we love you" (5 min.); Director biography [text feature].

Content Note

Introduction -- "I quit!" -- The turning point -- A troubling decision -- Underground press -- Black power -- The My Lai massacre -- A state of collapse -- The movement is everywhere -- Constellation vote -- G.I.'s take the stage -- Credits.