SIR! NO
SIR!
Directed by David Zeiger
Year of production :
2005
Running Time: 85 Minutes
Language: English
In the 1960’s an anti-war movement emerged that
altered the course of history. This movement
didn’t take place on college campuses, but in
barracks and on aircraft carriers. It flourished
in army stockades, navy brigs and in the dingy
towns that surround military bases. It penetrated
elite military colleges like West Point. And it
spread throughout the battlefields of Vietnam. It
was a movement no one expected, least of all
those in it. Hundreds went to prison and
thousands into exile. And by 1971 it had,
in the words of one colonel, infested the entire
armed services. Yet today few people know about
the GI movement against the war in Vietnam.
The Vietnam War has been the subject of hundreds
of films, both fiction and non-fiction, but this
story–the story of the rebellion of thousands of
American soldiers against the war–has never been
told in film. This is certainly not for lack of
evidence. By the Pentagon’s own figures, 503,926
“incidents of desertion” occurred between 1966
and 1971; officers were being “fragged”(killed
with fragmentation grenades by their own troops)
at an alarming rate; and by 1971 entire units
were refusing to go into battle in unprecedented
numbers. In the course of a few short years, over
200 underground newspapers were published by
soldiers around the world; local and national
antiwar GI organizations were joined by
thousands; thousands more demonstrated against
the war at every major base in the world in 1970
and 1971, including in Vietnam itself; stockades
and federal prisons were filling up with soldiers
jailed for their opposition to the war and the
military.
Yet today, with hundreds of thousands of American
GIs once again occupying countries on the other
side of the world, these history-changing events
have been erased from America’s public memory.
Sir! No Sir! aims to change all that.
The film does four things:
1) Brings to life the history of the GI movement
through the stories of those who were part of it;
2) Reveals the explosion of defiance that the
movement gave birth to with never-before-seen
archival material;
3) Explores the profound impact that movement had
on the military and the war itself; and
4) Tells the story of how and why the GI Movement
has been replaced with the myth of the spat-upon
veteran.
Sir! No Sir! is a film that challenges
deeply-held beliefs not just about the Vietnam
War and those who fought it, but about the world
we live in today. It is a vivid portrayal of
William Faulkner’s famous observation that “The
past isn’t dead; it isn’t even past.”
