Movies at MacArthur

The "Movies at MacArthur" film series takes place the third Tuesday of each month (unless noted otherwise). Doors to the museum open at 6 p.m. and the movies begin at 6:30.

Admission is free and there will be complimentary popcorn and drinks available.

January 16, 2024, 6:30 PM

Based on the award-winning book by Donovan Webster, this film reveals the unspoken truth about war – it doesn't end when the fighting stops. The program features interviews with individuals involved with the reparation of the residual devastation - people who destroy unexploded munitions at Verdun and in Sarajevo, recover and identify skeletons of battlefield casualties at Stalingrad, and help victims of Agent Orange in Vietnam. Archival footage sets each segment in its historical context.                                  

February 20, 2024, 6:30 PM

This documentary tells the story of the Tuskegee Airmen, a group of Black military pilots who broke stereotypes and helped win World War II with their daring fighter escorts of American bombers. The legacy-themed documentary features interviews with many original Tuskegee Airmen, family members, and historians – both Italian and American. It also follows the daughter of a Tuskegee Airman back to Italy to visit what remains of the base at Ramitelli and includes a visit to the cemetery at Nettuno, Italy, where several Tuskegee Airmen are buried.

March 19, 2024, 6:30 PM

An important element of the Cold War was the Space Race, in which both the United States and the USSR raced to build new technologies to be used for space exploration—with President John F. Kennedy eventually setting his sights on the Moon. The Soviet Union sent the first satellite into orbit around the earth in 1957. This came as a shock to the western world. When Yuri Gagarin became the first human to fly through space on April 12, 1961, the race for supremacy in space seemed decided. But then, in 1969, the Americans became the first nation to set foot on the moon. The race to conquer space continued.

April 16, 2024, 6:30 PM

On April 4, 1943, ten American prisoners-of-war and two Filipino convicts broke out of an escape-proof Imperial Japanese Army prison plantation in the Philippines. The secret that they carried out with them would shock the world. Called the “Greatest Story of the War in the Pacific” by the U.S. War Department in 1944, the full, uncensored true action adventure tale has been lost to history for nearly seven decades – until now.

 

May 21, 2024, 6:30 PM

Filmmaker Mark Pedri had never heard his grandfather Silvio's story. Ten years after his grandfather's death, Mark found an archive of photos and letters that changed the rest of his life. The discovery inspired Mark to journey across Europe on a bike to examine his grandfather's experience as a Prisoner of War in WWII in an effort to understand the man who helped raise him.

 

June 18, 2024, 6:30 PM

At the end of World War II, the United States, United Kingdom, and France controlled western portions of Berlin, while Soviet troops controlled the eastern sector. As the wartime alliance between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union ended and friendly relations turned hostile, and the Cold War began. The crisis started on June 24, 1948, when Soviet forces blockaded rail, road, and water access to Allied-controlled areas of Berlin. The United States and United Kingdom responded by airlifting food and fuel to Berlin from Allied airbases in western Germany. The crisis ended on May 12, 1949, when Soviet forces lifted the blockade on land access to western Berlin.

July 16, 2024, 6:30 PM

Unforgettable: The Korean War uses historical movies and personal photos combined with emotional remembrances to reveal the individual stories, the pride, the patriotism, the gallantry, the sacrifice and heartache behind “the Forgotten War.”

August 20, 2024, 6:30 PM

Over 130,000 Australian horses served in the Great War of 1914-18. Nearly 30,000 were engaged in the Middle East. Popularly known as 'Walers', they carried their men to victory on the long road to Damascus.  This epic desert war couldn't have been undertaken without the horses, or the small army of horse breakers, veterinarians, farriers, saddlers and feed suppliers that were essential to keeping thousands of horses in the field and battle-ready. Intense bonds between man and horse developed, and the loss of a horse in battle was a harrowing experience.

 

September 17, 2024, 6:30 PM

What drove a company of American soldiers — ordinary young men from around the country — to commit one of the worst atrocities in American military history? Were they “just following orders” as some later declared? Or, did they break under the pressure of a vicious war in which the line between enemy soldier and civilian had been intentionally blurred?  This documentary focuses on the 1968 My Lai massacre, its subsequent cover-up, and the heroic efforts of the soldiers who broke ranks to try to halt the atrocities and then bring them to light.

October 15, 2024, 6:30 PM

September 18,1980 the unthinkable happened at the Titan II missile complex near Damascus, Arkansas when a U.S. Air Force LGM-25C Titan II ICBM loaded with a 9-megaton W-53 nuclear warhead experienced a liquid fuel explosion inside its silo.

Based on the critically-acclaimed book by Eric Schlosser, this chilling documentary exposes the terrifying truth about the management of America’s nuclear arsenal and shows what can happen when the weapons built to protect us threaten to destroy us.

 

November 19, 2024, 6:30 PM

In 1961 Elvis Presley returned to Hawaii, a place he had grown to love, to begin shooting the movie Blue Hawaii.  While on Oahu the 26-year-old King of rock and roll would jumpstart efforts to bring the USS Arizona Memorial, then under construction and lacking funding, to reality.