Through the Green Door is a 90-minute, super 16mm documentary film currently being developed by One Arts with the exclusive permission of Chicago’s National Vietnam Veterans Art Museum and the enthusiastic support of Richard M. Daley, Mayor of Chicago. OneArts is working in conjunction with WTVS Detroit Public Television.

Through the Green Door will explore, in depth, the art and artists of the one-of-a-kind National Vietnam Veterans Art Museum—home to nearly one thousand of works of fine art created exclusively by Vietnam veterans, solely on the subject of the Vietnam War. These works of art represent the unflinchingly honest and startlingly insightful views of more than 140 artists who, unlike veterans of previous wars, were driven in large numbers to capture or exorcise the horrors they carried within.

Through the Green Door will present––for the first time before a large audience––a completely new, apolitical perspective of the war that tore America apart. Our audience will find that these men––who were not the aspiring college students, not the nation’s ‘golden boys’, not the men from whom the country expected anything remarkable,––became the painters, sculptors, poets and philosophers that may now hold in their grasp a piece of the soul that America lost during the decade of the Vietnam War.

Through the Green Door will talk to art critics, historians, war veterans, museum visitors, and the artists themselves to learn why this collection and the viewpoint of these artists is worthy of study.

Several of the artists whose works are on display in the museum have died in the past few years from war-related deaths––Agent Orange-related cancers and war injuries that waited like time bombs for 25 years before finally taking their lives. Only their work and their journals can speak for them now.