In February 1971, the Vietnam Veterans Against the War hosted The Winter Soldier Investigation, a media event in which returning troops testified to war crimes committed by American GIs. Their filmed accounts tell of massacred children, prisoners tossed from places, towns burnt down, civilians killed and abused. Even more chillingly, they present a much closer link than is often acknowledged between these outbursts of violence and the military policies under which they were committed. “I always thought this was the most important film we had about this country's tragic involvement in Vietnam,” Jonathan Rosenbaum wrote in 2005. “And I still do.”

Screening with Interviews with My Lai Veterans (Joseph Strick, 1971, 22m)