This special community screening of Theaters of War: How the Pentagon and CIA Took Hollywood (2022), followed by a Q&A with director Roger Stahl, professor of communication studies at UGA, is presented with support from the Willson Center for Humanities and Arts. Admission is free and open to the public.

Those who have seen Top Gun or Transformers might rightly suspect all that military machinery comes with strings attached. This influence is not limited to a handful of movies, though. A vast new trove of internal documents reveals that the Pentagon and CIA have doctored thousands of film and television scripts. Parting the curtains on this world, communication professor Roger Stahl engages an array of other stunned scholars, frustrated veterans, PR insiders, and industry producers. He reveals in unsettling detail how the US military-industrial complex pushes a version of history that scrubs the screen of war crimes, corruption, criticism of the nuclear arsenal, racism, sexual assault, assassinations, and torture. From James Bond to Jack Ryan, Captain Marvel to Cake Boss, the creation of this other "cinematic universe" is one of the great PR coups of our time.

Theaters of War is distributed by the Media Education Foundation and is an "Official Selection" of the Barcelona Human Rights Film Festival.