It was a grand day in San Diego when BRAVO! was awarded the prize for Best Documentary Feature at the GI Film Festival San Diego. Co-producers Ken and Betty Rodgers were joined by Bravo Skipper Ken Pipes, his wife Sharon and their family Tim, Sandra, and Connor at the festival for an afternoon screening of BRAVO! before a full theater at San Diego’s UltraStar Mission Valley Hazard Center. Hosted by San Diego newsman and celebrity Bob Lawrence, a Q&A session followed the film. The Rodgers and Skipper Pipes were joined on the panel by Bill Rider of American Combat Veterans of War. Bill was with the 1st Battalion 9th Marines at Khe Sanh and has been a great supporter of the film. During the Q&A, Skipper Pipes delivered a stirring speech about war, memory, family and the events at Khe Sanh.

This award would never have happened had not Tim and Sandra Pipes noticed that the film fest was coming up. They gave Skipper Pipes and Sharon a heads-up and we submitted and are grateful that all the work over the years by all the folks who have labored on this film and all the folks who have supported us financially or otherwise has finally found recognition in the film community.

This entire experience couldn’t have been more appropriate, because San Diego County played a significant part in the story of Bravo Company. First of all, every man in the film deployed to Vietnam from there. It is also the home of the Pipes family, some of the men in the film lived in or were stationed in San Diego County after their service in Vietnam and some of the musical sound track was composed and performed there by the late Harry Partch. What a wonderful Welcome Home.

At the G I Film Festival San Diego: Left to right: Tim Lucey, Skipper Ken Pipes, Sharon Pipes, Betty Rodgers. Photo courtesy of Ken Rodgers

The Film Consortium San Diego and KPBS, the local PBS station in San Diego County, in association with the GI Film Festival in Washington, DC, were the folks who put on the festival, and we wish to thank them for allowing BRAVO! a place of honor. Special thanks to Jodi Cilley of the Film Consortium and KPBS’ Claudine Casillas and Carla Conner for all their help.

A lot of old and new friends met us at the event and we had a great time visiting with them before and after the screening.

We enjoyed viewing some fine films concerning a host of topics about veteran and military life. The films were both short and long, documentary and feature.

BRAVO! friend John Giannini, a Vietnam Veteran and a filmmaker, had three films in the festival. His film about his father, ALDO GIANNINI – SERGEANT – UNITED STATES MARINE CORPS 1943-1946, was awarded the prize for Best Documentary Short. Congratulations, John! You can find out more about John and his films here.

You can find out more about the events at the GI Film Festival San Diego here. Concerning the photo gallery, you’ll find BRAVO! folks in the two Sunday albums.

While BRAVO! was screening at the GI Film Festival it was also screening in Emmett, Idaho, as a benefit for Brave Hearts Idaho. Frontier Cinema of Emmett hosted two screenings with all proceeds going to help fund programs for Idaho veterans who are experiencing financial crises. Thanks to Brave Hearts’ Jim Kern, Heather Paredes of the Eagle Field of Honor, and Frontier Cinema’s Roy Dransfield for all their hard work on these screenings. You can find out more about Brave Hearts Idaho here.

BRAVO! will be shown on the campus of Boise State University on Veterans Day, November 11, 2015. The event begins at 6;30 PM in the Jordan Ballroom in the Student Union Building and will be followed by a discussion with a panel of combat veterans. The screening will be part of Boise State University’s Veterans Week celebration. You can find out more about the week’s events here, and we hope to see you there. Parking for this event is free in the Lincoln Parking Garage on the campus. There will be a person at the Lincoln Parking Garage parking kiosk who will give you the parking code or if you would rather get the code from us, please send along an e-mail to the e-mail account associated with this blog.

The award for Best Documentary Feature at the G I Film Festival San Diego. Photo courtesy of Betty Rodgers.

On November 21, 2015, BRAVO! will be screened at the prestigious Ronald Reagan Presidential Library at 40 Presidential Drive, Simi Valley, California, as part of the events surrounding the library’s hosting of the Wall That Heals, a half-scale replica of The Vietnam Memorial. The film and related events in Simi Valley can be found here.

On the movie review front BRAVO! just received a great review from THE BOISE WEEKLY’S George Prentice. You can read George’s piece here.

If you or your organization would like to host a screening of BRAVO! in your town this winter, spring or summer, please contact us immediately.

DVDs of BRAVO! are available. Please consider gifting copies to a veteran, a history buff, a library, a friend or family member. For more information, go to https://bravotheproject.com/buy-the-dvd/.

BRAVO! has a page on Facebook. Please “like” us and “share” the page at https://www.facebook.com/Bravotheproject?ref=hl.

History, political science, anthropology, psychology, law, sociology, music, literature, film! Plus the Vietnam War!

Last week Betty and I had the immense pleasure of participating in a symposium on the Vietnam War hosted by Dr. Russ Tremayne and the College of Southern Idaho in Twin Falls, Idaho, made possible in part by the Idaho Humanities Council.

The symposium was a two-day affair with presentations on the history of the cold war by Dr. Curtis Eaton of the College of Southern Idaho, on the genesis of the Vietnam War by Dr. Tremayne, on the constitutionality of the war itself presented by Dr. David Adler of Boise State University’s Andrus Center for Public Policy, on the relationship between Idaho Senator Frank Church and President Lyndon B. Johnson and the conduct of the war by Professor Steven Shaw of Northern Nazarene University , on protest music popular during the Vietnam conflict by Tony Mannen of College of Southern Idaho, and on the Kent State incident where members of the Ohio National Guard shot and killed civilians at a war protest presented by Dr. Ron Hatzenbuehler of Idaho State University. All of this took place on Day One of the symposium.

Like many veterans of the Vietnam war, or veterans of any war, my experiences in war were visceral: fear, elation, despair, sadness, comradeship; things measured in the pulse beneath the skin on your wrist, the flow of blood hammering through your arteries, the swoop of exultation that erupts from your guts and zooms through the top of your head.

So I was fascinated, yes, even fetched by having my experiences, my emotions, in some manner dissected on a critical, analytical level that came at me from a number of differing disciplines collectively called the humanities.

As I sat there that first day, I thought the only thing missing was the personal aspect of the war. We heard about strategy and legality and history and big, sweeping concepts, but how did any of that speak to the intensely personal events of the war, the death, the trauma, the fear?

The Herrett Center at College of Southern Idaho, site of the symposium on the Vietnam War.

Then on Day Two, we got it, beginning with a screening of BRAVO! followed by a discussion of the war and its effects on men and women who fought it. And that began a melding of the academic with the visceral, the big picture with the personal, the disciplines of humanities study with the lives of the warriors who survived and those who didn’t.

And that combination, that melding, worked well, and I think it did because film and art (and film is an art), are also disciplines of the humanities that give us a different look at what happened.

The audience was made up of teachers and students and professors and veterans, and this fine mix of folks led to a heady discussion of the war as depicted in the film.

The screening of BRAVO! was followed by a presentation by Shawn Wong on how to teach soldiers to tell their stories. Wong is a novelist and professor of English at the University of Washington. He, along with actor Tom Skerritt, is instrumental in the Red Badge Project, an organization that encourages veterans to write their war experiences. You can find out more about Shawn Wong here and the Red Badge Project here.

The final presentation was made by Iraq War veteran and novelist David Abrams, author of the acclaimed novel FOBBIT, on how the veteran might go about telling his/her war story. You can find out more about David Abrams here.

So the first day was academic and the second was about story…personal story.

It was a heady experience for Betty and me to participate in such a comprehensive and stimulating look at my war.

Thanks much to Dr. Tremayne and his cohorts, professors Shilo Smith and Matt Reynolds. Thanks too, to the Idaho Humanities Council for their part in making this event happen.

On the screening front, check out these three important events! BRAVO! will be screened at the ninety-nine-years-young Frontier Cinema at 127 W. Main Street in Emmett, Idaho, at 3:00 and 6:00 PM on October 18, 2015. Advance tickets are $8 per person by calling (208) 867-9277, or $10 at the door. Seating is limited. All proceeds will go to Brave Hearts of Idaho, a 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation that helps veterans dealing with financial crises.

Also on October 18, BRAVO! will be screened as part of the GI Film Festival San Diego at 12:30 PM. The location is the Ultrastar Cinemas Mission Valley at Hazard Center. Admission is $10 general admission and $8 for veterans and active duty military. We are very proud to announce that BRAVO! has been nominated for Best Feature Documentary at this event. Come meet Bravo Company’s commanding officer, Ken Pipes.

On Veterans Day, November 11, 2015, BRAVO! will be shown on the campus of Boise State University as part of the week long celebration of veterans sponsored jointly by Omega Delta Sigma, the veterans fraternity at Boise State, and the university’s Veterans Services Office. The screening will be held in the Jordan Ballroom of the Student Union Building at 6:30 PM and admission is free to the public. There will be a panel discussion with veterans of both the Vietnam War and the Middle East conflicts following the screening. Parking will be available.

If you or your organization would like to host a screening of BRAVO! in your town this fall, winter, or spring, please contact us immediately.

DVDs of BRAVO! are available. Please consider gifting copies to a veteran, a history buff, a library, a friend or family member. For more information, go to https://bravotheproject.com/buy-the-dvd/.

BRAVO! has a page on Facebook. Please “like” us and “share” the page at https://www.facebook.com/Bravotheproject?ref=hl.