Blog: City Blog

Veterans Remembered by POW/MIA Flag, Vietnam Documentaries

September 15 is National POW/MIA Recognition Day and the last day the Prisoners of War (POW)/Missing in Action (MIA) flag will fly at City facilities until it returns for Veterans Day.

The flag (which doesn’t always pose for a photographer) is black and white and features the silhouette of a man with a watch tower and barbed wire fence in the background. Wording on the flag includes “POW,” “MIA,” and “You are not forgotten.”

The U.S. Congress passed a resolution authorizing National POW/MIA Recognition Day, which was first observed in 1979. According to the Defense Department’s POW/MIA Office, 1,741 people were designated as missing and unaccounted for from the Vietnam War (as of April 2009). There have been 841 U.S. personnel accounted for since the end of the Vietnam War in 1975.

East Tennessee veterans and their families may want to tune their televisions to East Tennessee PBS for the premiere The Vietnam War, the new 10-part, 18-hour documentary film series directed by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick.

The series is described thusly: “An immersive 360-degree narrative, the series tells the epic story of the Vietnam War as it has never before been told on film. THE VIETNAM WAR features testimony from nearly 80 witnesses, including many Americans who fought in the war and others who opposed it, as well as Vietnamese combatants and civilians from both the winning and losing sides.”

The documentary premieres 8 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 17, and airs Monday, Sept. 18 - Thursday, September 21, then Sunday, Sept. 24 - Thursday, Sept. 28, beginning at 8 p.m. each night.

Installments of this epic documentary will be bookended by short films made by local filmmakers.

Land Grant Films' documentary program, "Defenders of the Dream," airs Sept. 17, at 7 p.m. and Sept. 24, at 11 p.m. The half-hour program is comprised of three short documentaries about the lives of Vietnam veterans in East Tennessee made by University of Tennessee Journalism and Electronic Media seniors Tim Morris, Isaac Fowler, Isaac Ward and Jessie Tipton.

Nolichucky Pictures a.k.a. Nolpix Media LLC, has produced several short films including "A Sense of Revolution," which documents the student protests at the University of Tennessee during the Vietnam War. The other films are “Generations” and “A True American.” You can watch previews on their YouTube page, and watch the full productions on East Tennessee PBS in early October.

Posted by ptravis On 20 September, 2017 at 12:24 PM