2007 Documentary Short Winner: Shakey’s Hill
In 1970, one cameraman followed a battalion of American soldiers into the jungles of Cambodia . The mission was to seek out substantial weapons/supplies caches being used by the North Vietnamese Army during the Vietnam War. As the battalion closed in on the location of the caches, they encountered a growing resistance from the North Vietnamese forces.
Surreal footage and intimate interviews take audiences through each fire fight leading up to the operation’s climax, which became infamously known as the taking of ‘Shakey’s Hill.’ The hill was named after the battalion’s youngest soldier, who lost his life discovering the first cache. The discovery of the massive caches is considered one of the most successful operations of the American Forces, during the war.
Shakey’s Hill contains interviews from the field, in 1970, as well as retrospective interviews with the soldiers collected in 2004, exploring not only the events leading up to the mission’s success, but also the after effects of war, on the soldiers, some 35 years later
Norman Lloyd
Director
