SnagFilms Presents Free Memorial Day Documentaries

SnagFilms is a site where you can watch and share hundreds of free feature-length documentaries online. This weekend it is showcasing a slate of films devoted to Memorial Day themes.

As SnagFilms CEO Rick Allen wrote for Huffington Post:

Featured films include Return To Tarawa, the story of a veteran of one of the bloodiest battles ever fought by U.S. Marines, who returns to that Pacific atoll only to discover that what should be hallowed ground has become a garbage dump—and that the bones of warriors remain in place, unidentified and apparently ignored, at least by our government. Leon Cooper won’t forget, and the film outlines his last battle: to clean up “Bloody Tarawa” and venerate the dead.

Nanking is the highly-honored documentary that picked up its Peabody Award this week—now online for the first time. It brilliantly depicts the heroism of civilians just prior to World War II who tried to prevent a Holocaust from occurring when Japanese troops marched into the then-capital of China in 1937. Nanking reminds us that bravery is not the sole province of the soldier, and that moral and physical courage can come from unlikely sources.

In Vietnam, Long Time Coming, U.S. and Vietnamese soldiers embark on a 1600-mile bicycle tour throughout Vietnam, reflecting with their former enemies on our long war. A similar approach to post-war understanding, On Common Ground, tells the story of American and German World War II veterans meeting 55 years later on the very battlefield where once they’d fought.

Other Memorial Day films featuring World War II themes include Battle of the Midway, and Pearl Harbor: Day of Infamy. East LA Marine tells the story of US Marine PFC Guy Gabaldon, who captured over 1500 Japanese soldiers and civilians—single-handedly. For those who wish to reflect on Memorial Day along the contours of its original creation, SnagFilms is showing Arlington Field of Honor, which offers a tour of America’s most sacred warrior graveyard. Other films in the special offering include Devil Dog Diaries (National Geographic’s inside look at a unit in action during Desert Storm), and So Very Far from Home, the true stories that were the basis of Steven Spielberg’s Empire of the Sun.

We tried our hand at creating our own SnagFilms Memorial Day movie-theater widget, and found that it is easy to do. This one contains 3 films -- Pearl Harbor: Day of Infamy, Return to Tarawa, So Very Far From Home -- but there are plenty more on SnagFilms that are worthy of your attention.

Watch more free documentaries

See SnagFilms' free Memorial Day documentaries here.

Lessons From '60 Minutes'

Lessons for all videojournalists from 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley:

1. On finding a subject:

"We emphasize the telling of a story as opposed to an issue. Once in a while, a producer will come to the door and say, 'Clean coal.' And I'll say, 'That's an issue. Go find a story.' Steven Spielberg did not do a movie called The Holocaust. He did a movie called Schindler's List. It completely encompassed the entire issue, but it's about this guy and his story.... (60 Minutes creator) Don Hewitt used to tell us, 'Find people who can tell the story better than we can.'"

2. On writing your script:

"The writing process is very collaborative, and there's no such thing as good writing, just good rewriting. We probably cut a piece four or five times before we think it's ready to see. We'll write the perfect script on the first draft, go into the edit booth, cut the thing, and it's awful. We do another pass, it's still bad but some things are beginning to work. Third, fourth pass, it's starting to look like a 60 Minutes piece, but it's 18 minutes long, has to be 12. Another pass, it's 12:30, looking like a piece ready to show to (the executive editor and executive producer). Sometimes they eviscerate it."

3. On structuring your story:

"I often think of 60 Minutes stories as three-act plays. In classic newspaper writing, the story peters out by the end. At 60 Minutes, you want the arc to build, the piece to become more fascinating with every passing minute as it crescendos somewhere in that third act. It builds and builds and builds. It needs to ring like a bell at the end."

-- 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley, quoted in Written By (Dec. 2008), the magazine of the Writers Guild of America.