Documenting War and the Veteran’s Experience, with Sebastian Junger and Lisa Gilman
Thursday, February 23, 3:30 to 5:30 p.m.
University of Oregon in Portland
White Stag Block, 70 NW Couch Street
Join community members, students and veterans for an exploration of the war-time and post-conflict experience of veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, as well as the screening of a powerful new documentary film, Grounds for Resistance.
Sebastian Junger is a best-selling author (The Perfect Storm, A Death in Belmont, Fire) and a renowned journalist. His recent work includes the book WAR and the film Restrepo, based on his year embedded, along with the late photojournalist Tim Hetherington, with the 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team in eastern Afghanistan. Junger and Hetherington reported on the war from the perspective of soldiers who experienced heavy combat in a remote valley. Restrepo was awarded the 2010 Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival and was nominated for a 2011 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.
Professor Lisa Gilman is director of the Folklore Program at the University of Oregon and producer of the documentary Grounds for Resistance, about Coffee Strong, a pro-soldier, anti-war coffee house near Joint Base Lewis-McCord, in Washington State. This nonprofit café is a space for soldiers, veterans and their families to discuss politics and the impacts of war, and it provides resources for dealing with combat stress, sexual trauma and other issues, as well as navigating veterans’ benefits and legal systems.
The film focuses on the veterans who run Coffee Strong, exploring their decisions to enlist, memories of deployment, relationships, and how their efforts to create a more peaceful world help them cope with their experiences of war.
Following a screening of Grounds for Resistance, Junger and Gilman will discuss their work, in conversation with the audience. This event is free and open to the community.
Sponsored by the following University of Oregon units:
—George S. Turnbull Portland Center, School of Journalism and Communication
—Academic Affairs, UO Portland
—Academic Extension
—Oregon Humanities Center, Endowment for Public Outreach in the Arts, Sciences, and Humanities
—Folklore Program
Grounds for Resistance 