Covering Conflict: documentary film series at The Norfolk Library (part one)

"Dateline Saigon" will be followed by a Q&A with Jim Sterba and Francis Fitzgerald at Norfolk Library Nov. 8
Provided
"Dateline Saigon" will be followed by a Q&A with Jim Sterba and Francis Fitzgerald at Norfolk Library Nov. 8
In commemoration of Veterans Day, the Norfolk Library is hosting a short series of documentary films called “Covering Conflict – Journalists on the Ground”. The first film, "Dateline Saigon," will be shown on Friday, Nov. 8 from 7 to 9 p.m. with an introduction and Q&A by Mark Erder.
Directed by Thomas D. Herman and narrated by Sam Waterston, the film tells the inspiring story of a small group of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists including David Halberstam, Neil Sheehan, Malcolm Browne, Peter Arnett, and the photojournalist Horst Faas, who fought to report a truth that was vastly different from the rosy White House version during the early years of the Vietnam War.
Dateline-Saigon is Herman’s directorial debut. Previously, Herman was a co-producer of the Emmy-award winning feature film Live From Baghdad starring Michael Keaton and Helena Bonham-Carter. Before that, Herman was a freelance producer for CNN as well as a correspondent for National Public Radio.
Herman received a BA with honors from the University of Pennsylvania and continued his education at Harvard, Oxford, and Northeastern Universities.
When he’s in between films, Herman practices law in Boston. “Being a lawyer helps me pay the bills while I pursue my passion, filmmaking,” he says.
Co-producer of Dateline Saigon Bestor Cram, served as a Marine Lieutenant in Vietnam from 1968-69. What Cram witnessed stood in contrast to the official White House account.
“The White House lie that the war was going well was part of ever-increasing propaganda. Military officials believed I had become a traitor by joining the anti-war movement, both while I was in the military and after I had been honorably discharged, and for my work with VVAW (Vietnam Veterans Against The War). They expressed concerns that I was abetting the enemy. I represented a fundamental challenge to their belief structure,” Cram says.
An established producer, director, and cinematographer of non-fiction films for television and museums, Cram helped Herman develop the story line for Dateline Saigon.
“Tom Herman and I worked together in shaping the narrative structure and editorial approach that shaped what the film is today. We worked on keeping the focus on the early reporting of the war as it became a foundational lens in which the press continued to reveal the ‘ground truth’. The archival material reflects the ideas and stories the journalists offered in their interviews. Although they are recollections, the eloquent capacity of each of the journalists reveals their intimate experience of bearing witness,” Cram says.
Dateline Saigon will be followed by a Q & A with Jim Sterba and Francis Fitzgerald, moderated by Mark Erder. Sterba has been a war and national correspondent for more than four decades, first for The New York Times and then for The Wall Street Journal. As a 26 year old journalist covering the war in Vietnam in 1969, he realized he was witnessing a reality greatly from the official US military narrative.
“As the newest of four New York Times reporters, I attended daily briefings and wrote the daily war story. I attributed to US and South Vietnam briefers what they told us. I also reported what dissidents in the military and elsewhere told me,” he says.
“Gradually, as I got to spend more time in the field, my skepticism grew. Nixon’s ‘Vietnamization’ program was kicking in, turning the war over to South Vietnamese units, but hundreds of US troops were dying weekly, mostly draftees,” he adds.
After two years covering the war on the ground, Sterba grew more skeptical of US foreign policy. He reflects on how press coverage affected public opinion and how that contrasts from the access journalists are granted today.
“Reporters had great freedom in Vietnam. We could go anywhere, unescorted, hitchhike on helicopters and airplanes, and were welcomed, especially by combat troops, to see for ourselves. No censorship whatsoever. The military would try to shape stories by putting out their versions, often sanitized, but that didn’t stop us. After Vietnam the Pentagon clamped down, restricting access, requiring escorts, delaying sending stories out of the war zone,” Sterba says.
Francis Fitzgerald, who is married to Sterba, received the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the Bancroft Prize for her first book "Fire in the Lake: the Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam" (1972).
At the age of 25, Fitzgerald went to Vietnam in 1966 and returned twice in the early 1970s. As a freelance writer, she did not have to adhere to official briefings, known as “the five o’clock follies” for their overly positive tone.
“Having read Bernard Fall, Jean Lacouture and other French writers, I began as a skeptic. Witnessing the destruction of the villages and the horrifying casualties at Vietnamese civilian hospitals, I ended up passionately anti-war,” Fitzgerald says.
"Fire in the Lake" was the first major history of Vietnam and American involvement by an American author. It explores Vietnamese history and culture and argues that the lack of understanding by the U.S. military ultimately doomed American efforts.
“I never understood why Johnson et al put such faith in the domino theory, except they seemed to know nothing about the different cultures and world-views in Thailand, Cambodia and Indonesia,” Fitzgerald says.
In her book, Fitzgerald argued that American values were incompatible with Vietnam’s values, culture, agrarian economy, and long history of warfare with France and China.
Regarding the role of journalists and the resurgence of authoritarianism today, Fitzgerald says, “Journalists shape opinion as much now as in Vietnam, but the Middle East is much more difficult for them to cover. Many have died since the U.S.-Iraq war began, and some are dying now in the Gaza strip and in Lebanon. Demagogues and ‘fake news’ have always existed. The task for journalists has always been how to counter them.”
To register, go to: norfolklibrary.org/events
SHARON — Sharon Dennis Rosen, 83, died on Aug. 8, 2025, in New York City.
Born and raised in Sharon, Connecticut, she grew up on her parents’ farm and attended Sharon Center School and Housatonic Valley Regional High School. She went on to study at Skidmore College before moving to New York City, where she married Dr. Harvey Rosen and together they raised two children.
Sharon’s lifelong love of learning and the arts shaped both her work and her passions. For decades, she served as a tour guide at the American Museum of Natural History and the Asia Society, sharing her knowledge and enthusiasm with countless visitors. She also delighted in traveling widely, immersing herself in other cultures, and especially treasured time spent visiting her daughter and grandsons in Europe and Africa.
She was also deeply connected to her hometown, where in retirement she spent half her time and had many friends. She served as President of the Sharon East Side Cemetery until the time of her death, where generations of her family are buried and where she will also be laid to rest.
She is survived by her husband, Harvey; her children, Jennifer and Marc; and four beloved grandchildren.
Claire and Garland Jeffreys in the film “The King of In Between.”
There is a scene in “The King of In Between,” a documentary about musician Garland Jeffreys, that shows his name as the answer to a question on the TV show “Jeopardy!”
“This moment was the film in a nutshell,” said Claire Jeffreys, the film’s producer and director, and Garland’s wife of 40 years. “Nobody knows the answer,” she continued. “So, you’re cool enough to be a Jeopardy question, but you’re still obscure enough that not one of the contestants even had a glimmer of the answer.”
Garland Jeffreys never quite became a household name, but he carved out a singular place in American music by refusing to fit neatly into any category. A biracial New Yorker blending rock, reggae, soul and R&B, he used genre fusion as a kind of rebellion — against industry pigeonholes, racial boundaries and the musical status quo. Albums like “Ghost Writer” (1977) captured the tension of a post–civil rights America, while songs like “Wild in the Streets” made him an underground prophet of urban unrest. He moved alongside artists like Lou Reed and Bruce Springsteen but always in his own lane — part poet, part agitator, part bridge between cultures.
“I think what I tried to do with the film, wittingly or unwittingly, was just to show that we all have these lives and they don’t often meet our dreams of what we think we’re entitled to, we’re talented enough to get or whatever,” said Claire. “We all have these goals, but we’re sort of stymied. Often, it’s partly circumstance and luck, but it’s also very often something that we’re doing or not doing that’s impeding us.”
This is not the typical rock-and-roll redemption story. There are no smashed guitars, no heroic overdoses, no dramatic comeback tour. What we get instead is something quieter and more intimate: hours of archival footage that Claire spent years sorting through. The sheer effort behind the film is palpable — so much so that, as she admitted with a laugh, it cured her of any future ambitions in filmmaking.
“What I learned with this project was A, I’m never doing it again. It was just so hard. And B, you know, you can do anything if you collaborate with people that know what they’re doing.”
Claire worked with the editing team of Evan M. Johnson and Ben Sozanski and a slew of talented producers, and ended up with a truthful portrayal — a beautiful living document for Garland’s legions of fans and, perhaps most importantly, for the couple’s daughter, Savannah.
“She’s been in the audience with me maybe three or four times,” said Claire. “The last time, I could tell that she was beginning to feel very proud of the effort that went into it and also of being a part of it.”
Savannah pursued a career in music for a while herself but has changed tracks and become a video producer.
“I think she couldn’t quite see music happening for herself,” said Claire. “She was like, ‘I don’t know if I want to struggle the way I saw my dad struggling and I’m going to get a job with a salary.’”
The film doesn’t just track the arc of an underappreciated musician, however. The music, always playing, is the soundtrack of a life — of a man navigating racial, musical and personal boundaries while balancing marriage, parenthood, aging, addiction andrecovery. Garland and Claire speak plainly about getting sober in the film, a life choice that gave them both clarity and shows Claire as a co-conspirator in his survival.
“I did some work early on with a director,” said Claire. “He wanted the final cut, and I didn’t feel like I could do that — not because I wanted so much to control the story, but I didn’t want the story to be about Alzheimer’s.”
Diagnosed in 2017, Garland, now 81, is in the late stages of the disease. Claire serves as his primary caregiver. The film quietly acknowledges his diagnosis, but it doesn’t dwell — a restraint that feels intentional. Garland spent a career refusing to be reduced: not to one sound, one race or one scene. And so the documentary grants him that same dignity in aging. His memory may be slipping, but the film resists easy sentimentality. Instead, it shows what remains — his humor, his voice, his marriage, the echo of a life lived on the edges of fame and at the center of his own convictions.
The Moviehouse in Millerton will be screening “The King of In Between” on Sept. 20 at 7 p.m. Peter Aaron, arts editor of Chronogram Magazine will conduct a talkback and Q&A with Claire Jeffreys after the film. Purchase tickets at themoviehouse.net.
The Haystack Book Festival, a program of the Norfolk Hub, brings renowned writers and thinkers to Norfolk for conversation. Celebrating its fifth season this fall, the festival will gather 18 writers for discussions at the Norfolk Library on Sept. 20 and Oct. 3 through 5.
Jerome A. Cohen, author of the memoir “Eastward, Westward: A Lifein Law.”Haystack Book Festival
For example, “Never Take the Rule of Law for Granted: China and the Dissident,” will be held Saturday, Sept. 20, at 4 p.m. at the Norfolk Library. It brings together Jerome A. Cohen, author of “Eastward, Westward: A Life in Law,” and Mark Clifford, author of “The Troublemaker: How Jimmy Lai Became a Billionaire, Hong King’s Greatest Dissident, and China’s Most Feared Critic” in dialogue with journalist Richard Hornik to discuss the rule of law and China.
The Council on Foreign Relations stated, “Few Americans have done more than Jerome A. Cohen to advance the rule of law in East Asia. He established the study of Chinese law in the United States. An advocate for human rights, Cohen has been a scholar, teacher, lawyer, and activist for sixty years.”
Cohen, a professor at New York University School of Law and director of its U.S.-Asia Law Institute, revealed his long view on China: “We are now witnessing another extreme in the pendulum’s swing toward repression. Xi Jinping is likely to outlive me but ‘no life lives forever.’ There will eventually be another profound reaction to the current totalitarian era.”
Mark Clifford, author of “The Troublemaker: How Jimmy Lai Became a Billionaire, Hong Kong’s Greatest Dissident, and China’s Most Feared Critic.”Haystack Book Festival
In “The Troublemaker,” Clifford chronicles Lai’s life from child refugee to pro-democracy billionaire to his current imprisonment by the Chinese Communist Party. Clifford is president of the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation, a Walter Bagehot Fellow at Columbia University, and holds a PhD in history from the University of Hong Kong. He was the former editor-in-chief of the South China Morning Post and The Standard (Hong Kong and Seoul).
Journalist Richard Hornik, adjunct senior fellow at the East-West Center in Honolulu.Haystack Book Festival
Richard Hornik, adjunct senior fellow at the East-West Center, will moderate the discussion. Hornik is the former executive editor of AsiaWeek, news service director of Time magazine, and former Time bureau chief in Warsaw, Boston, Beijing and Hong Kong.
Betsy Lerner, author of “Shred Sisters,” is giving the 2025 Brendan Gill lecture at the Haystack Book Festival.Haystack Book Festival
The Brendan Gill Lecture is a highlight of the festival honoring longtime Norfolk resident Brendan Gill, who died in1997. Gill wrote for The New Yorker magazine for fifty years. Betsy Lerner, New York Times-recognized author of “Shred Sisters,” will deliver this year’s lecture on Friday, Oct. 3, at 6 p.m. at the Norfolk Library.
Visit haystackbookfestival.org to register. Admission is free.