News-Info-Alerts

To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci
(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Re: POW-MIA Made For TV Movies Air Dates

Date: October 29, 1998

Two POW-MIA 'made for tv' fim announcements.

For Immediate Release

DIRECTOR WERNER HERZOG'S "LITTLE DIETER NEEDS TO FLY: ESCAPE FROM LAOS" PAINTS PROFOUND PORTRAIT OF COURAGE AND WILL IN CINEMAX REEL LIFE DOCUMENTARY DEBUTING OCT. 29

As a child, Dieter Dengler dreamed of flying airplanes. Little did he know that when his wish came true, it would lead to the adventure of his life. Directed and narrated by acclaimed filmmaker Werner Herzog ("Fitzcarraldo"), LITTLE DIETER NEEDS TO FLY: ESCAPE FROM LAOS tells the incredible true story of Dieter Dengler, the only U.S. pilot to have successfully escaped from a North Vietnamese-controlled prison.

An intense and riveting documentary that brings a personal perspective to the horrors of the Vietnam War, the exclusive "CINEMAX Reel Life" film debuts THURSDAY, OCT. 29 (11:30 p.m.-12:45 a.m. ET). Other playdates: Nov. 9 (6:40 a.m.) and 25 (9:15 a.m.).

Dieter Dengler was born in the Black Forest of Germany not long before his father was killed in World War II. From the moment he witnessed his town of Wildberg being bombed by an Allied airplane -- one of his most vivid early memories -- Dieter wanted to become a pilot. Growing up in shattered post-war Germany, the young man and his family endured desperate privation, and he went to work as a clock maker and apprentice at blacksmithing before emigrating to America at age 18. Dengler's quest for the skies began when he joined the U.S. Army, but was relegated to non-flying duties. After the stint ended, he went to college and eventually enlisted in the Navy. At last, inside the cockpit and at the controls, Dengler was now a pilot. Assigned to duty in Vietnam, he was shot down on his first bombing mission over Laos in 1966. Thrown from the plane upon impact, Dengler ran into the jungle -- and entered a horrific nightmare of prison, torture and a fight to survive against all odds. Two days later, he was captured by Laotian forces, who marched him through the jungle

Signature Double Take --------

1945 found the Soviet Union victorious in World War II, but devastated economically and terrorized politically by Joseph Stalin, who in this century was second only to Adolph Hitler in his bloody and brutal regime. Millions were punished for the most minor infractions by years of hard labor in the Gulag prison system. Officially, the Great Stalin Railway was to parallel the Arctic Circle for 800 miles to defend Russia's northern border. In reality it linked hundreds of Gulag camps from which the slave labor was supplied for this hopeless endeavor. An exclusive presentation of HBO Signature Double Take, THE DEATH TRAIN tells the prisoners' story when it debuts SUNDAY, NOV. 8 (7:45-9:00 p.m. ET), on the HBO Signature multiplex channel.

Other playdates: Nov. 13 (8:15 a.m.), 16 (10:30 a.m.), 18 (2:20 a.m.), 19 (noon), 21 (10:45 p.m.) and 25 (7:45 p.m.).

Hundreds of thousands of men were shipped by train and barge to Siberia. If they survived the journey, enduring starvation, disease and brutal cold, more of the same awaited in the camps. From the beginning the project was doomed by engineering faults and bureaucrats who cared more for meeting deadlines than for the welfare of the prisoners or the structural integrity of the railway. Sloppy construction on the fragile permafrost meant that when the ground partially thawed in the summer, it shifted and destroyed all the work done the winter before.

Knowing that their work was essentially for naught was just one of the things that broke the prisoners' spirits. Sadistic guards, temperatures of minus-60 degrees Fahrenheit, and lack of food and water did the rest. As one survivor recalls, "All human emotions -- love, friendship, envy, mercy, honesty -- fell away from us along with the meat of our muscles...The only thing left was anger: the most enduring of human emotions."

THE DEATH TRAIN documents these atrocities through archival film footage, excerpts from several prisoners' published memoirs, and interviews with five survivors. Vasily Grossman writes how the cars of the trains had steel spikes underneath, which would shred any prisoner escaping through the bottom of the car, and searchlights and machine guns on the roofs to execute those escaping through the top.

Alexander Pobozhy writes of how the guards used mosquitoes as punishment. "A slacker would be stripped naked and tied to a wooden pole. Within a few minutes his body would become a black mass of insects. If the experience didn't kill him, the unconscious prisoner would be dragged back to camp." One young man chopped off his hand to avoid working. Peddling stationary bicycles rigged to a turbine to provide electricity for the guards, six men froze to death one night. Starving prisoners ate half a barrel of machine grease, mistaking it for butter in their desperation.

Among the men interviewed for the film are:

Georgii Byenkin -- He was taken in 1945 from his mother, wife and six-day-old son. He never saw them again. On the train north, he recalls that "When people urinated, the stream turned to hoar frost, like fine snow...People were so thirsty they scratched at the frozen urine and drank it."

Boris Stachikov -- Imprisoned for possessing anti-Stalin literature, he recalls that in the mornings on the train, people woke up frozen to their bunks. By the time they arrived at the camp, there were five frozen corpses on the floor of the car. There was only one law in the camp -- ``You die today, I die tomorrow.'' In order not to die today, people went to desperate measures. He recalls stealing a dying man's food ration for himself -- an act for which he still feels profound guilt.

Nikolai Mankevitch -- A former soldier, he was ordered to help dispose of corpses. A guard bayoneted the bodies to make sure they were dead. Six men pulled them on a sledge and dumped them on the frozen ground, too weak to dig graves. He credits his survival to cowardice. "If I weren't a coward, I'd have gone for the wire and let them shoot me," he says.

Alexander Snorsky -- A medical student imprisoned for anti-Soviet agitation, he was transported to Siberia in a barge. It was there that "we realized for the first time how worthless our lives had become. I now realized my life had no value whatsoever."

Genaadi Stroganov -- A teenage prank of stealing a bottle of vodka landed him in the Gulag for seven years. He recalls prisoners being shot for leaving the "work zone" to urinate. "There was a rumor that the guards earned holiday credits for shooting anyone trying to escape. You became an 'escapee' as soon as you left the work zone."

On March 5, 1953, Stalin died. His railway project was abandoned 20 days later. Although many Soviets mourned his death, one former prisoner hissed, ``I hate Stalin so much, I'd dig him up and break all his bones.'' It is estimated that between 60,000 and 100,000 prisoners died constructing the railway. In the end, approximately 500 miles of track had been laid -- one "sleeper" (railroad tie) for every corpse.

THE DEATH TRAIN was produced and directed by Emmy(r) winner Tom Roberts ("Mother Russia's Children"). For HBO: supervising producer, Nancy Abraham; executive producer, Sheila Nevins.

Contact:
New York: June Winters or Tim Chandler (212) 512-1608 or 1462 Los Angeles: Nancy Lesser or Tonya Owens (310) 201-9274 or 9355 hbo.com