Cosponsored with the Oregon Humanities Center’s Endowment for Public Outreach in the Arts, Sciences, and Humanities

In Ashland, Oregon in the spring of 2008, a group of twenty-four war veterans came together for a five-day retreat headed by Michael Meade, a renowned mythologist and storyteller with extensive experience in bringing people together for recovery. The troubled group, made up of Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq war veterans, undergoes a variety of cathartic techniques proctored by Meade. What unravels over the course of the retreat is a deeply emotional journey where the veterans write poems, sing, and tell stories of their experiences with war, with post-traumatic stress, and with the struggle to find normalcy once again. There are laughs, outbursts, silences, and tears, eventually culminating in their own poetry readings to a sell-out crowd at the Ashland Shakespeare Festival on Memorial Day. Winner of the audience award for Best Documentary at the Ashland Independent Film Festival, Best Dramatic Documentary at Docufest Atlanta, and Best U.S. Feature Documentary at the Ojai Film Festival, The Huffington Post calls The Welcome “an astonishing film.” Shawn Levy of The Oregonian praises the film: “Sometimes you stumble into something out of a sense of duty or good intentions only to find yourself absorbed and overwhelmed beyond anything you might have anticipated. That’s the state in which I find myself after watching The Welcome.” The Welcome is a powerful look at the healing process and how lives are affected after war, as well as a reminder of the difficulties of war veterans to find their way back home.

The Welcome
Sunday, April 22, 1:00 p.m., Bijou