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RFH 2010, Arts

Filmmaker to Discuss War Documentary at Theater Monday

Sun, Feb 20, 2011

Restrepo, a Sundance-winning documentary about the war in Afghanistan will play at the Hamilton Theater Monday at 7:30 p.m. Admission is free.

The film by Tim Hetherington -- who will be at the theater to answer questions after the movie -- and Sebastian Junger follows the Second Platoon, Battle Company, 173rd Airborne Brigade, during a 14-month deployment to the Korengal Valley. The title is the name of the outpost, which was named for the platoon's medic, PFC Juan Restrepo, who was killed in action.

Both filmmakers have spent extensive amounts of time covering the war. They collaborated on this film about the platoon that was considered “tip of the spear” for American fighting in the Korengal Valley, a rugged valley six miles long near the border with Pakistan.

According to the website about the film:

"Starting in June 2007, Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger dug in with the men of Second Platoon, making a total of ten trips to the Korengal on assignment for Vanity Fair Magazine and ABC News. Each trip started with a helicopter flight into the main firebase in the valley and then a two-hour foot patrol out to Restrepo. There was no running water at Restrepo, no internet, no phone communication, and for a while, there was no electricity or heat; it was essentially just sandbags and ammo.

Some days the outpost was attacked three or four times from distances as close as fifty yards. Hetherington and Junger – sometimes working together, sometimes alone – did everything the soldiers did except pull guard duty and shoot back during firefights. They slept alongside the soldiers, ate with them, survived the boredom and the heat and the cold and the flies with them, went on patrol with them, and eventually came to be considered virtually part of the platoon. By the end of the deployment, they had shot a total of 150 hours of combat, boredom, humor, terror, and daily life at the outpost.

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