Newspaper Article

WRITING THE WAR: THIS IS MANS DOING

Horrigan, Kevin, Turner, Bryan, ARMY STAFF SGT JACK LEWIS, ARMY STAFF SGT JOHN MCCRAY

2007

Overview

\"Operation Homecoming\" - it premieres on PBS (Channel 9 in St. Louis) on April 16, but first gets a brief run April 10-12 at Landmark's Plaza Frontenac Cinema - is a remarkable and heartbreaking look at the Iraq War from a grunt's-eye level. And it is but one of 11 documentaries airing on PBS that week under the umbrella title \"America at a Crossroads,\" examining the many dimensions of our conflict in the Middle East. They say politics makes strange bedfellows. So does war: The \"Operation Homecoming\" project is a collaboration between the National Endowment for the Arts and the Department of Defense. After more than a year of conducting writing workshops at military bases for soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines involved in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the NEA solicited essays, poems, fiction and prose and compiled the results in an archive. An hardcover anthology of some of the writings was published last year by Random House. The \"Operation Homecoming\" film was made by The Documentary Group, an independent film company made up mainly of former ABC News producers associated with the late Peter Jennings. One of the producers got wind of the project and pitched the NEA on a documentary. The film that came out of those discussions includes eight distinct film interpretations of the writings of service members.

• Publisher: Pulitzer, Inc
• Subject: Documentary films / Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience / Television programs