I FOUND IT!! I FOUND IT!!! I FUCKING FOUND IT!!!!! My White Whale of endangered media!
The Trial Of The Catonsville Nine (1972)
The straight to VHS shoestring budget courtroom drama based on the play by Father Daniel Berrigan, one of the defendants, about the trial of nine Catholic clergy and lay people who used home-made napalm to burn the Vietnam War draft files of the Catonsville office of the Selective Service on Frederick Road on May 17, 1968 in a symbolic act of civil disobedience. The intent of the action (which they tipped off a local news station about so it would be filmed) was to be arrested while holding hands in prayer, openly admitting what they'd done, and use the very public trial to grandstand about their motives and beliefs. (Later termed the hit & stay tactic.) Including that they believed the war was illegal and unethical, and therefore any attempt to non-violently stop it was justified.
It's taken almost directly from the court transcripts, though out of order (as they state) so that the order of how they all came to be there is presented more linearly. The one substantial inaccuracy is that the trial was successful in being sensational and very public, and the courtroom was very raucous, mainly in their favor. The excellent documentary Hit & Stay (2013) talks about it, as well as other actions taken by the same group as part of their anti-war actions.
It was powerful before, but it is so, so deeply powerful today (even as a lifetime atheist very critical of the Church, Father Daniel Berrigan was my childhood hero and I thought it was very cool that he was the first priest on the FBIs most wanted list). If you liked the dialogue about religion as stories that motivate deeds in Wake Up Dead Man (2025), this is the group of real people Father Jud would be inspired by.
I got a VHS copy in high school in the early 2000s, but it's been misplaced through a couple moves and technology changes. Still hoping it'll turn up in some box somewhere. I briefly found it on the Internet Archive, but it was pulled for copyright before I could download it and rewatch it. Finally came across this YouTube version! It's low resolution, but that's also pretty much what it looked like on film, and there's only a slight glitch near the end. There was only one run of VHS tapes ever made because they struggled with distribution (had no money and made back even less). So it's a miracle that a home VHS tape recording made it to digital at all.
If you enjoy this film, please download it and preserve it. Let it keep popping up like mushrooms if and when it gets taken down. Show it to your friends and activist groups. Please send it to religious people in your lives, especially Christians, since it talks about how their belief in a just and loving God as well as their belief in aspirational United States values led them into direct confrontation with a Church and a government that did not seem to really share them. This was a message flung forward half a century in time to speak to us right now while trying to meet another terrible moment. As Christians, or US Americans, or simply as fellow human beings.
I want to be very clear that this message worked. This delivery in the courtroom, on public record, in the news, in play houses, and as a film changed hearts and minds about the Vietnam War. When you see religious leaders being willingly arrested today in the name of their beliefs, please know that reaches people that other actions may not. There's no one right way to protest and resist. There's no one right group of people to do it or one right set of values to uphold. Every bit of resistance from as many angles as possible is what stops atrocities from continuing.
