The Most Secret Place on Earth is a 2008 film by German director Marc Eberle.

After 30 years of conspiracy theories and myth making, this film uncovers the story of the CIA’s most extensive clandestine operation in the history of modern warfare: The Secret War in Laos, which was conducted alongside the Vietnam War from 1964 -1973. While the world’s attention was caught by the conflict in Vietnam, the CIA built the busiest military airport in the world in neighboring and neutral Laos and recruited humanitarian aid personnel, Special Forces agents and civilian pilots to undertake what would become the most effective operation of counterinsurgency warfare.

As the conflict in Vietnam grew, the objective in Laos changed from a cost effective low-key involvement to save the country from becoming communist into an all-out air war to cut the Ho Chi Minh Trail and bomb Laos back into the Stone Age that it had never really left in the first place. Conventional bombs equivalent to the destructive power of 20 Hiroshima-type weapons fell on Laos each year – 2 million tons of bombs, more than on Europe and the Pacific theatre combined during World War II. Until today much of the countryside is poisoned by Agent Orange and littered with unexploded ordnance.

In “The most secret place on earth” key players of the secret war – CIA agents, pilots, Laotian and Thai fighters -take us on a journey into the physical heart of the conflict: Top secret Long Tieng. Long Tieng was often described as “The Most Secret Place on Earth”. It was located in a valley at 3,100 feet elevation, high enough to have chilly nights and cold fogs. It was surrounded by mountains and on the northwest side of the runway were karst outcrops several hundred feet high. In the shadow of the Karst outcrops was “Sky” the CIA headquarters in Long Tieng. Jerry Daniels, a CIA officer codenamed “Hog,” is said to have named Sky after his home state of Montana, known as “Big Sky Country.” Long Tieng was protected on three sides by limestone mountains.

The story is told with archival images, interviews and contemporary shots of both Laos and the US. Some of the archive footage is previously unpublished and comes from private collections of former US personnel stationed in Laos, and from the Lao Film Archives – these had never before been screened. The interviews are conducted in a way to characterize the interviewees in their respective roles within the film. A voice over narration is sparsely applied where necessary. The investigative story telling is rendered by declassified documents, maps and newspaper clippings. Contemporary shots of both US government bodies (Congress, CIA Headquarters, the White House) and Laotian sceneries drive at a metaphoric visual rendering and connect the aftermath of the secret war in Laos to the machinations in the jungles of Washington 30 years ago. Americas Secret war in Laos tells of the absurd brutality of a conflict, that has barely been documented in it’s full extent and yet cost up to hundreds of thousand lives.

To view a trailer of the film visit http://vimeo.com/61339748

Free to the public.

A RARE CENTRAL NEW YORK PERFORMANCE TO BENEFIT ArtRage!

Mike Greenlar

Join award-winning photographer for the Syracuse Post-Standard, Mike Greenlar as he chronicles his travels to a remote mountain region of Laos in an artist talk about his exhibition at ArtRage, Remnants of A Secret War. The photographs on display document life in two resettlement villages where the Hmong continue to farm land rife with unexploded cluster bombs and other munitions. The US covert bombing campaign, between 1964 and 1973, gave Laos the distinction of being the most bombed country in the history of warfare — over two million tons of ordnance was dropped.

Mike Greenlar is currently a staff photographer/videographer for the Syracuse Post-Standard Newspaper. He has also acted as a freelance editorial photographer for national publications like Life Magazine, The New York Times Magazine, Fortune, Forbes, Stern, and as a contract photographer for BusinessWeek. Mike has worked as an adjunct professor of photojournalism at Newhouse as well as exhibiting locally. He received B.A. in Journalism from St. John Fisher College in Rochester, New York.  This event is free to the public. Light refreshments will be served.

VICTOR/VICTORIA (1982) (132min)

Julie Andrews sparkles as a starving soprano in Jazz Age Paris who in order to work pretends to be a man. She becomes the toast of Pareé but her life becomes complicated because the man she pretends to be must pretend to be a woman. All this and she sings, or he sings, in a spectacular entertainment that bends genders every which way to make a gay rights point. Co-Starring James Garner Oscar-nominated Robert Preston, Lesley Ann Warren.

$5 Suggested Donation

Cluster bombs at the Cope Center, Laos

Bombies (2002) (57 min)
Directed by Jack Silberman

The most appalling episode of lawless cruelty in American history is the bombing of Laos. If you want to know what Afghanistan will be like in twenty years, watch Bombies. In a cohesive, well-documented approach, Bombies beautifully captures the history and effects of the U.S. carpet bombing in Laos.

Between 1964 and 1973 the United States conducted a secret air war, dropping over 2 million tons of bombs and making tiny Laos the most heavily bombed country in history. Millions of these cluster bombs did not explode when dropped, leaving the country massively contaminated with bombies as dangerous now as when they fell 30 years ago.

Mother & Child made from bomb remnants.

Bombies examines the problem of unexploded cluster bombs through the personal experiences of a group of Laotians and foreigners and argues for their elimination as a weapon of war. Unfortunately they are still a standard part of the US arsenal and were dropped in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq.

To watch a trailer please visit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJavG9cW60o

Free to the public.

BEAUTIFUL THING (1996) (90min)

At once warm, witty and honest, Beautiful Thing reveals the lives and inner emotions of two teenage boys in working-class London who despite themselves become more than just friends. Jamie and Ste are as different as can be, one introspective and sensitive, the other brash and athletic. But grappling with malfunctioning parents will draw them together along with surprising feelings for each other in a film that is equally ‘hard to resist’ (film.com).

$5 Suggested Donation

BEFORE STONEWALL (1984) (87min)

This stirring documentary explores the modern fight for gay rights in America through five decades of archival footage, personal memories, and photographs. Here is a visual and oral album of gay subculture in the “Roaring” 1920s and the Depression, in the military and work force of WWII;  later harassment during the McCarthy era, then grassroots 1950s political efforts,  and the civil rights movement. The film peaks with the 1969 riot at Stonewall Inn, often seen as the birth of modern gay and lesbian liberation. Among its many awards: Grand Prize at Sundance, International G&L Film Festival, LA Filmex, Houston Film Festival, Global Village, Emmy.

$5 Suggested Donation

!! SAVE THE DATE !!

Join us for our 5th Annual benefit celebration and extravaganza!

Held right at ArtRage, it’s better than ever with a special surprise guest Emcee

Wonderful food, Cash Bar & Fun under the stars!

Bid on great Silent Auction items all to benefit ArtRage!

$15 suggested donation at the door (or 2 for $25)

Sponsored by the

Filmed over 23 years, The Betrayal is the Academy Award-nominated directorial debut of renowned cinematographer Ellen Kuras in a unique collaboration with the film’s subject and co-director, Thavisouk (“Thavi”) Phrasavath. It is an epic story of a family forced to emigrate from Laos after the chaos of the secret air war waged by the U.S. during the Vietnam War. Kuras has spent the last 23 years chronicling the family’s extraordinary journey in this deeply personal, poetic, and emotional film.

The Betrayal begins chillingly with a 5,000-year-old Lao prophecy, as related by Thavi’s grandmother, “A time will come when the universe will break. It will break piece-by-piece, country-by-country and religion-by-religion. Husband and wife will break into two. The children will escape into the wind…” That time came for the small country of Laos with the clandestine involvement of the United States during the Vietnam War. By 1973, three million tons of bombs had been dropped on Laos in the fight to overcome the North Vietnamese, more than the total used during both world wars. After the U.S. government waged a secret war in Laos during the Vietnam War, Thavi’s father and thousands of other Laotians who had fought alongside American forces were abandoned and left to face imprisonment or execution.

Hoping to find safety, Thavi’s family made a harrowing escape to America. Phrasavath takes us through his youth, his escape from persecution and arrest in Laos, his family’s reunion and their journey as immigrants to America, and the second war they had to fight on the streets of New York City.  Drawing on the techniques of experimental film and the traditions of Laotian culture, Nerakhoon (The Betrayal) is a tale about a country, a family, and a young man who discovers the power and resilience of the human spirit.

Free to the Public