FILMS FOR ACTION

Enemy Image (2005)

3

When Baghdad exploded under bombs, television chose to bring us fireworks. But does this distant and spectacular image tell us what is really happening on the ground, how it feels or what it means? Television has the means to take us anywhere and show us anything. It can bring us the physical experience of war with all its’ horrors, like no other medium, and yet the image of American war on television is disembodied, bloodless, and unreal. The invasion of Iraq was the most closely documented war ever fought. Lasting only 800 hours, it produced 20,000 hours of video, but those images were tightly controlled, producing a monolithic view of combat sanitized and controlled by the Pentagon.

Enemy Image traces the ways us television has covered war, starting with Vietnam in the 1960s and shows how the military has devised ever-improving means of ensuring the American public never again has the real face of combat beamed directly into their living rooms. Comparing footage of Vietnam, including rarely-seen material shot in North Vietnam, to coverage of Iraq and using extensive interviews with veteran war correspondents and news anchors, Mark Daniels demonstrates how television that once revealed the truth is now increasingly used to hide it.

Trending Videos
Carl Sagan's Cosmos: A Personal Voyage (1980)
780 min - Astronomer Carl Sagan's landmark 13-part science series takes you on an awe-inspiring cosmic journey to the edge of the Universe and back aboard the spaceship of the imagination. The series was...
SHOCK Video: George W Bush ADMITS He's A War Criminal In Freudian Slip!
10 min
A Cloud Never Dies | Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh (2022)
28 min
Born Sexy Yesterday: Another Gendered Hollywood Movie Trope That Needs to Die
18 min
Humanity Is Not A Parasite
14 min - Misanthropic, borderline ecofash narratives about humanity's relationship with nature have become way too common in discourse about climate change, highlighting the urgent and critical importance...
People are Losing Faith in Democracy, What a Surprise!
12 min
How To Keep Your Heart Open In Hell | Ram Dass
14 min
America's War On Abortion (2020)
66 min
Hiding in the Walls (2022) (trailer)
2 min - Hiding in the Walls captures the complicated and devastating story of Baltimore’s lead poisoning epidemic. It takes a deep dive into the origins of lead poisoning, the failures of local leadership...
Socialism for Absolute Beginners
25 min
Honest Government Ad | 2022 Election (Season 2 Finale)
6 min
Let’s Replace Cancel Culture with Accountability | Sonya Renee Taylor
18 min
The New Corporation - Watch for FREE Until the End of May
2 min - "The greed economy is killing us. But change is coming." Watch this film for FREE during Films For Action's free screening event, going on now till the end of May, 2022. 
Oliver Stone: The Untold History Of The United States (2012)
570 min
Schooling the World (2010)
66 min
How Forests Heal People
5 min
LOAD MORE
Trending Articles
Documentaries by Scott Noble
More Free Documentaries
Raising Children
Subscribe for $5/Month to Gain Access to These Great Films

Films For Action is a library for people who want to change the world.

 

Our mission is to provide citizens with the knowledge and perspectives essential to creating a more beautiful, just, sustainable, and democratic society.

Films For Action was founded in 2006 by a few friends in Lawrence, Kansas, after realizing how essential healthy media is to a healthy democracy.

Over the last 15 years, we've reviewed and curated over 1,000 free documentaries and 4,000 short films, plus over 150 pay-per-view documentaries, spanning 34 topics related to changing the world.

During this time we've been able to reach tens of millions of people - not by owning a TV network or spending truckloads of cash on advertising, but because millions of awesome people keep sharing 'films for action' with their friends on social media - in particular, our 850,000 supporters on Facebook and 70,000 site members. 

One of the coolest things is, thanks to our patrons, our library is ad-free and 100% supported by member donations. We don't accept any government or corporate funding, and the dozens of emails we get every week asking us to put ads or sponsored posts on the site just go in the trash bin. The Pay-Per-View films on our site, of course, help support the filmmakers, and 90-100% of the revenue for PPV films hosted by us goes to the filmmakers. 

To thank our $5/mo patron subscribers, we partner with filmmakers to provide access to a growing number of films that are normally PPV. With just 26 highly-curated films at the moment, it's basically a mini "Netflix for world changers," but its main function is to support the library as a whole, which is 99% free and always will be.

Want to become a patron? Subscribe here. You can cancel or pause your subscription at any time.

If you'd like to know more, want to help out, or you're a filmmaker or distributor looking to collaborate, drop us a line via our contact page. 

Cheers,  
Tim Hjersted
Co-Founder & Director
Lawrence, KS