RunningTime : 72

TheatricalReleaseDate : 1998

ReleaseDate : 2000-05-02

Studio : Docurama

Publisher : Docurama

Format : Color/DVD/NTSC

Director : Xuan Ngoc Nguyen/Lucy Massie Phenix/Ken Schneider

Binding : DVD

Description
On January 1, 1968, Barbara Sonneborn’s husband, Jeff Gurvitz, left to fight in Vietnam. Eight weeks later, on February 29, 1968, he crawled out of a foxhole during a mortar attack to rescue his radio operator and was killed. Sonneborn learned of her hu

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This beautiful, shattering documentary by photographer Barbara Sonneborn began production in 1992 but was spiritually born in 1968 with the death of her husband and high school sweetheart, Jeff Gurvitz. Eight weeks into his tour of duty in Vietnam, Gurvitz was killed during a mortar attack at Khe Sanh while attempting to rescue a comrade. A tape-recorded letter he had just sent to his wife appeared in Sonneborn's mailbox some time after his awful sacrifice. Sonnenborn put it away and did not listen to it until her decision to make this film, which concerns the losses and agonies endured by women on both sides of America's disastrous military campaign in Southeast Asia. Mixing archival combat footage and striking new cinematography highlighting Vietnam's green splendor, Sonneborn bridges the past and present. She visits the scene of her husband's death and interviews a number of Vietnamese women nearly broken by grief over horrendous family loss and personal suffering: forced prostitution, torture, the abandonment of wounded loved ones. Back in the U.S., Sonneborn turns to other widows of American soldiers lost in the war and hears their stories, as well as those of other women who reveal the prolonged, terminal misery of men exposed to Agent Orange. The film's anguish is palpable yet effectively subdued, the better to let its delicate workings evoke a deep reaction from its viewers. --Tom Keogh