S1.E10 ∙ Standing My Ground

In 1924 eight men travelled from rural South Australia to Paris for the race of their lives.

During World War II, the British Royal Air Force determined it was possible to deal the German war industry a devastating blow by destroying three hydroelectric dams in the Ruhr Valley. Given the inaccuracy of the high-altitude bombing and the German defenses constructed to prevent torpedoes from reach the dams, British munitions experts created a bomb that would bounce along the surface to evade if delivered from a near-suicidal height of only 60-feet. The raid was a success with two of the three dams being breached. This documentary tells the story of the attack.

On December 10, 1948, the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted and proclaimed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Five of these UN member countries are today the biggest arms dealers in the world. Made with archive footage edited in fragments, WARdisease explore without chronology the equal posture of the people which are the toys of that economic reality. Men women children. Run cry fall die, be armed. And start again.

Teenage migrants arrived in France without parents, go on stage to recount the exile and their brutally interrupted childhood. They dreamed of a better world, wanted to be free, to live in peace. After a long perilous journey to Europe, they discover a reality they did not know. They suffer but their dignity impresses. From victims to authors, they transcend to cultural playmakers.

Centered around a 2008 revival of The Brig, the inflammatory 1963 play that exposed the harsh realities inside a US Marine prison, this documentary by Karin Kaper and Dirk Szuszies puts former Marine Kenneth H. Brown's drama into historical perspective - and makes a case for its ongoing relevance - through powerful scenes from the recent production in Berlin as well as illuminating interviews with directors of the play past and present, revival cast members, and the playwright himself. When Julian Beck and Judith Malina, the founders of New York's radical Living Theater, brought The Brig to their stage in the early 1960s, many theater critics - not to mention the US Department of Defense - found it not just obnoxious but subversive. Rooted in the surrealist model of Theater of Cruelty, Brown's claustrophobic vision of young, caged Marines being transformed into automatons - performing a kind of foot-stamping ballet at double-time as they're verbally abused and punched in the gut by their guards - outraged many and stirred others to antiwar action. More than four decades later, with Americans again on the battlefield, the play still strikes raw nerves. One of the young cast members, explaining how violently it changes shape with each performance, admits, "I'm under psychic stress for two hours."

In the early 90s, Joseph Bickell decided that he was going to legalize marijuana by any means necessary. Taking action, he would go on to change his name to Chief Wana Dubie, secede his property from the United States, declare war against America, and ultimately plant a field of marijuana in protest to the War on Drugs.