S23.E11 ∙ Writing With Fire

Arguing for the need of an independent media, Tonje Hessen Schei examines the US media's covering of the war in Iraqi.

Profiling the boys who lied about their age in order to enlist in World War II.

In Emelie Mahdavian's After the Curtain, four female dancers battle shifting cultural norms and face increasing disfavor in the Post-Soviet, predominantly Muslim nation of Tajikistan. The women weigh their love of art against economic hardship, loneliness, and social reproach in this intimate portrait, which also celebrates the rich dance and music culture of a Central Asian country largely unknown in the West.

The documentary 'Lighter Than Orange' reveals a political failure through individual biographies. It depicts the fates of a few of the 3 million Vietnamese veterans who have been victims of Agent Orange. Due to exposure to dioxin-based herbicide Agent Orange used during the Vietnam War, veterans brought home a change in their DNA. This change having been passed down through the generations, their children are still suffering from incurable illnesses and debilitating deformity today. The film allows the people concerned to share their experiences, following their stories from the years of war to the present situations of their families. In the end, it confronts with the question of dealing with the persistent contamination and the fates of the victims of Agent Orange dependent on support.

War is Sell delves into the history and tactics of war propagandists - soldiers armed not with guns, but with words, pictures and commercial advertising techniques in their "battle to win hearts and minds." How do you sell a war? How do the techniques of government propagandists, public relations consultants and commercial advertisers work, and why are they so effective? How did the United States become a master of domestic war propaganda over the course of the twentieth century? If, as many claim, human beings are biologically "hard-wired" to wage war, why should propaganda be necessary at all? Is it possible to train people to critically evaluate, and ultimately resist, deceptive propaganda messages? War is Sell uses archival films, television news coverage, propaganda images from WWI and the Iraq War and interviews with a diverse set of researchers to answer these and other questions in a lively, absorbing manner.