Oscar winner "Hearts and Minds" at Hipp April 5th.

Oscar winner "Hearts and Minds" at Hipp April 5th.
March 2004

The next film in the monthly documentary collaboration between the Hippodrome Cinema and the Civic Media Center will be April 5. The film will be from the vaults of Oscar-winning documentaries, the 1974 winner Hearts and Minds.

Hearts and Minds is a documentary of the Vietnam war. It's not just the policy makers and the realities of war which are documented, but the attitudes that allow wars to be fought and the contrasting views of the soldiers who came back supporting and opposing the war. It also presents the views of Vietnamese people in whose country the war was being fought. The strong and stark language and imagery of the film underscore the raw wound Vietnam was and still is in the U.S.

With the war records and positions of our presidential candidates in the mix this election (especially the coming attacks on Kerry's activities with Vietnam Veterans Against the War), seeing this film is important to understand those times. It can be a companion to Errol Morris's Fog of War, Oscar winner this year, which also travels over the territory of the Vietnam War via the memories of Robert McNamara, one of that war's architects. (Fog of War will be coming to the Hipp Cinema for a week starting April 30th.)

And maybe, with the thousands of mentally and physically scarred veterans coming home, there may be veteran voices again raising questions about the conduct and purpose of the war, as well as the aid and care made available to those who suffer from it.

Showings of Hearts and Minds will be 4:30, 7 and 9:30 on Monday, April 5 at the Hippodrome Cinema in downtown Gainesville.