While many knew James Gandolifini for his portrayal of Tony Soprano, DCTV knew James Gandolfini as a committed advocate for the rights and welfare of America’s war veterans. We proudly worked with him on several documentaries, including ALIVE DAY MEMORIES: HOME FROM IRAQ and WARTORN: 1861-2010. As a DCTV Board Member from 2012 until his death, he supported all of DCTV’s work, especially DCTV Youth Media and DCTV Productions. He believed in documentary film as one of the best tools to shift cultural perspectives, and created some very powerful projects in the course of his lifetime.
This program will screen a selection of the following films:
ALIVE DAY MEMORIES: HOME FROM IRAQ
Dir. Jon Alpert and Ellen Goosenberg Kent | 2007
A new generation of veterans is returning from Iraq. For these survivors, two days will forever memorialize their lives: their birthday and their Alive Day–the day they narrowly escaped death. This HBO Documentary Films production presents the first-person stories of ten Alive Day heroes as told to Emmy(R)-winning actor James Gandolfini.
WARTORN: 1861-2010
Dir. Jon Alpert, Ellen Goosenberg Kent, Matthew O’Neill | 2010
Executive produced by James Gandolfini (HBO’s Alive Day Memories: Home From Iraq) and produced by award-winning filmmakers Jon Alpert, Ellen Goosenberg Kent and Matt O’Neill, this 75-minute HBO Documentary Films presentation explores combat stress and posttraumatic stress on military personnel and their families throughout recorded American military history.
Beginning with the first documented cases from the Civil War, the film examines occurrences of PTSD through two World Wars and Vietnam, as well as more recent cases involving soldiers who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. The stories are told through soldiers’ revealing letters and journals; photographs and combat footage; first-person interviews with veterans of WWII, the Vietnam War, Operation Desert Storm and Operation Iraqi Freedom; and interviews with family members of soldiers with PTSD.
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