IPSWICH — Dream Catcher Films Entertainment, Inc., an award-winning production company based in Ipswich, will be screening its latest documentary at 7 p.m., Saturday, in the Dolan Performing Arts Center in Ipswich.
After six years fundraising, shooting, editing and producing, “The Green Box: At The Heart of War,” will air on PBS throughout the country starting in November – the 80th Veterans Day since WWII ended.
The Ipswich screening will be followed by question and answer session with Executive Producer/Co-director Holly Stadtler, Writer/Co-director Victoria Hughes, interviewees in the film, and Jim Kurtz, the book’s author.
The film is based on “The Green Box,” a memoir by Kurtz. It tells the story of his decadeslong search to discover the fate of his father, U.S. Army Air Corps 2nd Lt. Robert Kurtz.
In the beginning, Kurtz only knew that his father was a bomber pilot in the European theater of the WWII. Bob Kurtz died when his son was 2 years old and because of his mother’s grief, most of the details of his father’s life remained a mystery.
The story begins when 8-year-old Kurtz sneaks into the family attic to explore the contents of a forbidden green box; the clues inside inaugurate his life-long pilgrimage to know his father. What emerges are the details of a hero’s journey – a hero that few people knew about. The defining event of that journey began on Aug. 3, 1944. In 1943-44, the chances of air crew surviving a combat tour without being shot down, captured or killed was about 25%. On his 20th mission, Bob Kurtz was shot down and captured.
The film follows Kurtz as he tries to walk in his father’s footsteps. The production team traveled to the Austrian Alps where Bob Kurtz’s B-24 crashed; they interviewed witnesses of the fateful air battle. They traveled to Sagan, Poland, site of the infamous prisoner of war camp, Stalag Luft III.
As the story evolves, a picture of his father’s life emerges, and viewers see how his war experiences were part of iconic events, and where his life intersected with some of the surviving veterans who were integral to those events.
Included in the film are some of the last interviews with heroic Tuskegee airmen and other veterans who shared Bob’s experiences, including the tragic “Forced March” across a frozen Europe in the winter of 1945.
As significant as the details of combat courage, this captures the love story between Kurtz’s parents. He learns his mother Peggy was just as brave on the home front. And embedded in the tale are a mysterious pair of baby shoes that may have saved the elder Kurtz’s life.
With that love story, and through interviews with family members of other survivors from Bob Kurtz’s plane, Sugar Baby, the film explores the long-term effects of war, not only for veterans themselves, but on their families and communities – effects that often last for generations.
Experts on the social impact of war, and on the ravages of PTSD help to bring home the full impact of war on individuals.