The Ground

During the height of the Vietnam war, a hippie and a draft dodger get together and hatch a plan to flee to Canada. They steal a car and head towards Vancouver, but the trip doesn't go as smoothly as they planned, and before long they're being chased by the police, accused of murdering several police officers.

An estimated 200,000 Chinese women were forced into prostitution by the Japanese army during WWII. Only 22 of them remain today to speak out publicly. This documentary is not a film for political gains or narrow nationalistic purposes. For the director and the crew, each and every one of those elderly women is a brave and strong individual with similar yet distinctive experiences. This is a group that deserves to be known and correctly understood by more people and a history worth being preserved in a most accurate yet sensitive way. In the documentary, the current situation of those 22 elderly women will be presented in an impersonal way. There's no interrogation, sympathy, nor exaggeration in our film. You will hear them talk about their own experiences, and you will also learn about their perspectives on life, sufferings and happiness. Now all over 80 or 90 years old, those elderly ladies are at the very last stage of their life. This is probably the last chance for the public to actually see their situations and hear their own words while they are still alive. It should not be a history just written on pages.

The film opens with a German air raid over the skies of London, and moves to the attempts of the F.B.I. and Scotland Yard investigators trying to circumvent the attempts of a sabotage ring dedicated to impeding the flow of American airplanes and flying fortresses to Britain (on FDR's Lend-Lease program since the United States was not yet at war with Germany and Italy.) Tim Hanley is an American agent, posing as a lawyer connected with the United States Embassy in London, and Reggie Oliver, a Scotland Yard detective, posing as a music critic, who has a hard time understanding American slang, are keeping their eye on Carla Nillson, a famous singer, whom they suspect of espionage. They all meet in London, then in Lisbon, and eventually in New York City, where Carla sings on the radio under the auspices and sponsorship of Sidney Grenner, a wealthy candy manufacturer, who is in reality the head of the sabotage gang. Miss Nillson may or may not know that some of the songs she sings over the radio are in code, and give instructions to the enemy operatives about airplane shipments to England. And even if she doesn't know, will she still be implicated and subject to being arrested by Tim, with whom she has fallen in love? And if she is arrested, will Tim be waiting for her after the Allies defeat the Nazis?

Andrew Renzi's sheds light on the lives of three of the estimated thousands of immigrants who volunteer for service in the American military, yet find themselves deported from the US once their tours of duty are over.

US Army Staff Sergeant Wesley Kent returns from the war abroad and must now fight the threat of corruption and deception in his hometown at all personal costs.

The International Military Tribunal for the Far East after Japan's surrender in World War II.