Professor’s film “Tattooed Under Fire” premieres on KLRU PBS, Oct. 30

Event: Radio-TV-Film Professor Nancy Schiesari’s documentary, “Tattooed Under Fire,” is a unique, intimate, character-driven portrait of Iraq-bound and returning U.S. soldiers as they go under the tattoo needle, sharing their secrets and confessing their fears.  

When: 9 p.m., Oct. 30, 2008

Where: KLRU-TV, Austin PBS (channel 18, cable channel 9)

Background: Based in a Texas tattoo parlor outside Foot Hood, America’s largest military base, the film centers on the military ritual of getting tattooed, interweaving the personal stories of six central characters with the visual expressions of the tattoos themselves. Each soldier’s story is a highly personal account of the human and cultural cost of war in which getting carved represents courage in the face of pain, a warrior mark of a very intimate nature. But the tattoos cross lines of gender, class, and political affinity to reveal the inner lives of young men and women as they live through the horrors of the Iraq war. The returning soldiers’ confessions to their tattoo artists reveal the torment of their experiences and the long term damage that the war is doing to a generation of young Americans. The film’s narrative moves from the early expectations and excitement of 18- and 20-year olds through cynicism and anger to a sense of a psychological aftermath that will never be erased.

For more information about the film, visit http://tattooedunderfire.com/. For more information about Professor Schiesari, visit http://rtf.utexas.edu/faculty/nschiesari.html.

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Contact:
Nancy Schiesari
512-471-6678