Investigation of a Flame

A Documentary Portrait of the Catonsville Nine. Stunningly beautiful, politically potent film about the power and price of protest available on DVD for the first time.




"A documentary about the protest events that made Catonsville, Maryland, an unpretentious suburb... a flash point for citizens resistance at the height of the war."
—New York Times




"One of the ten best films released in 2002!" —Phillip Lopate, Film Comment

"To those who think that everything in a society and its culture must move in lock step at times of crisis, INVESTIGATION OF A FLAME might seem to be off-message. But the film is in essence patriotic... saluting U.S. democracy as it pays homage to the U.S. tradition of dissent."
—The Baltimore Sun

"Gorgeously crafted! A film to rave about, as well as reckon with."—The Independent

On May 17, 1968, three priests, a nurse, an artist and four others walked into a Catonsville, Maryland draft board office, grabbed hundreds of selective service records and burned them with homemade napalm. INVESTIGATION OF A FLAME is an in timate look at this unlikely band—dubbed the Catonsville Nine—who broke the law in a poetic act of civil disobedience. The publicity and news coverage from their ensuing trial helped galvanize an American public that was becoming increasingly disillusioned with the Vietnam War.

INVESTIGATION OF A FLAME explores this protest within the context of these extremely different tim es; times in which foes of Middle East peace, abortion, and technology resort to violence to access the public imagination. Filmmaker Lynne Sachs has combined volatile, long-unseen, archival footage with a series of informal interviews with Daniel and Philip Berrigan, Howard Zinn, John Hogan, Tom Lewis, and Marjorie and Tom Melville . The meditative result encourages viewers to ponder what obligations they have in times of war, the contemporary relevance of civil disobedience, and the implications of personal sacrifice for the greater good.

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• Iraq
• War
• Vietnam
• Catonsville
• Nine
• Berrigan
• Brothers
• antiwar
• anti-war
• peace
• protest

[dagasdfa3333]

AWESOME!

[4854derrida]

Fr. Daniel Berrigan wrote, of the Catonsville incident: "Our apologies, good friends, for the fracture of good order, the burning of paper instead of children. . . ."

[bboscia]

people broke in, took out draft files and burned them, symbolically, with napalm. were senteced to between 3 and 6 years each.

[tomkreft]

It's trippy to see video of my town from nearly 40 years ago.

[BajaMarita]

Thank you for posting this video.

[adriandevc]

che i lopate

[markspeaks]

ignore the last 2 guys, morons! berrigan had huge impact as a man of conscience and as a priest.

[cobolsam]

Peace.

[whiskeymedic]

ok dumb public schooled idiot here....what the f is this about?

[BozNeroli]

Did these guys visit the commie "re-education" camps after the war? Did they visit the mass graves of the Khmer Rouge? Of course not.