DC III

a film by our director Stephen Talbot and his friends in 1971

ABOUT THE FILM

With friends David Davis, Deirdre English and Aly Sujo, I spent a week in April 1971 on the Mall in Washington, DC, with Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW). We were making a film about the riveting, emotionally gut wrenching spectacle of hundreds of Vietnam vets stepping to a microphone on the Capitol steps, denouncing the war, and discarding their medals in a vast heap, culminating with John Kerry's passionate, eloquent anti-war testimony to Congress. It remains the most dramatic demonstration I've ever witnessed.

We called our rough and ready, black and white, 16 mm film "DC III" because the vets named their protest "Dewey Canyon Three" in an effort to expose what had been two secret previous U.S. military "limited incursions" into Laos and Cambodia code-named Dewey Canyon. The vets proclaimed they were making a "limited incursion" into Nixon's Washington. Their actions that week included a march to Arlington National Cemetery, a sit-in on the steps of the Supreme Court, and guerrilla theater re-enactments of combat.

VVAW ended up using our film as an organizing tool, and we showed it on campuses and to community groups all over the country. It also aired on a few public TV stations.

Now 50 years later, DC III is a reminder that many of the men sent to fight in Vietnam became passionate opponents of the war.

THE FILM’S ORIGINAL PROMOTIONAL LEAFLET

Explore The Movement and the “Madman” website for the newest film Steve Talbot is directing about the antiwar movement’s dramatic showdown with Richard Nixon in 1969.