A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

©2010 A&E Television Networks. Content © 1999 Lou Reda Productions and A&E Television Networks In 1999, months before the 50th Anniversary of the start of the Korean War, The History Channel (now History) aired The Korean War: Fire and Ice, a four-part television series about a conflict most Americans have chosen to forget: the 1950-1953 struggle between the U.S.-led United Nations Command and the Soviet-supported North Korean/Chinese alliance for control of that divided Asian nation. Produced by Lou Reda and written by Rod Paschall, The Korean War: Fire and Ice mixes archival footage (both color and black-and-white) from the archives of several nations and 1990s interviews with historians, former diplomats, and U.S. Korean War veterans. Though much of the archival footage is combat footage, there are also shots of non-battle events, such as Soviet leader Joseph Stalin's 1949 meeting with North Korean dictator Kim Il Sung, the deliberations at the UN Headquarters in N

(C) 2011 A&E Home Video WWII in HD: In November of 2009, History aired a 10-episode miniseries titled simply WWII in HD, which was "shot and remastered in high definition" and culled from - as the package blurb puts it - "three thousand hours of color film few knew existed" from several countries' archives. Essentially, producer Lou Reda and writers Matthew Ginsburg, Bruce Kennedy and Liz Reph take a page from the Ken Burns playbook and follow the wartime experiences of 12 American men and women who participate in World War II either as combatants (Jack Werner, Shelby Westbrook), caregivers (Jane Wandrey) or reporters (Robert Sherrod, Richard Tregaskis) from Pearl Harbor Day to VJ Day. The narrative, which combines color footage collected over a two-year world-wide search in Allied and Axis archives, interviews with now-elderly veterans and dramatic readings from the 12 "characters'" letters and journals to recreate as vividly as poss