Elliot Berlin

Whitwell, TN is a small, rural community of less than two thousand people nestled in the mountains of Tennessee. Its citizens are almost exclusively white and Christian. In 1998, the children of Whitwell Middle School took on an inspiring project, launched out of their principal's desire to help her students open their eyes to diversity in the world and the horrors and enormity of the holocaust.

Like the young men in many small American towns during and after the Great Depression, the boys of Bedford, Virginia, joined their local National Guard unit. They were paid one dollar for every weekend training session - a lot of money in 1941 - and they were given a snazzy uniform to wear that pleased the ladies. Not a bad deal. What they couldn't have foreseen was that Japan would attack Pearl Harbor and draw the United States - and their little Guard unit - into a war that everyone hoped would end all wars. In no time at all, these fresh-faced soldiers were torn from the arms of their girlfriends and new wives and found themselves in training camps, learning to fight for their country. Eventually these boys who had not yet seen a minute of battle would become the first to hit the beaches of Normandy on what we now know as D-Day.

A short film that deals with the strange and the supernatural. This film features a stop-motion newt, created and animated by Mr. Chorvinsky.