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Arts & Entertainment

Not Yet Begun to Fight

NOT YET BEGUN TO FIGHT PREMIERES AT ATLANTA FILM FESTIVAL

One battle is over.   Another is just beginning.

Over the past decade, tens of thousands of wounded warriors returned home.   Not Yet Begun to Fight, a provocative documentary film, presented by Ultraviolet Projects & Story Road Films, focuses on five warriors who accept an invitation to join retired Marine Colonel Eric Hastings for a week of fly-fishing in Montana.   Hastings, who flew missions high above the death and destruction in Vietnam, returned home to Montana in 1969 a wounded warrior.   His solace was fishing, the opposite of war and a gentle healing occupation.   In 2010, filmmakers Sabrina Lee and Shasta Grenier had the opportunity to shadow Colonel Hastings as he reached out to a new generation of traumatized combat veterans returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan.   

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Not Yet Begun to Fight was selected by the judges of the prestigious Atlanta Film Festival 2012 to participate in this year’s competition.   The film is one of ten documentaries chosen from 350 entries in this year’s festival.   The Academy Award qualifying festival will kick-off its 36th year on Friday, March 23 and continues through Sunday, April 1.   Not Yet Begun to Fight will premiere on Saturday evening, March 24 at 7 p.m. at the Landmark Midtown Art Cinema, in Atlanta’s Midtown, 931 Monroe Drive NE, Atlanta, Georgia.     

Colonel Hastings talks about what it was like to return home from the Vietnam War more than 40 years ago.   “The river healed me,” he said.   ‘Fly-fishing is a series of opportunities for hope.”    In 2010, he brought five remarkably courageous, intense and charismatic young men (three marines, a soldier and a Navy Seal) with him to the quiet waters of Montana.   His mission was to help them find their way through the space between the war they had just left behind and the new battles they face ahead.   The film tells the stories of Blake, Mark, Erik, Erin and Elliott who recently returned from combat.      According to Mark, a former bomb technician, “You have to deal with the ghosts.   You just better make friends with them.”  

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Hastings knows what he has to do to help these 21st century warriors deal with their ghosts:    He brings them to the river.   He puts a fly rod into their hands, teaches them to cast, and then shares his own secret with this new generation of warriors:   “When I came back from combat, I found I needed relief and the more I went fly-fishing, the more I knew I needed more of it.   It became an absolute desperate physical and mental need.”

To learn more about the film and its filmmakers, visit the website at www.notyetbeguntofightfilm.com.

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