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A selection of photographs by free-lance journalist Francis F.Conrad taken at the height of America's involvement in Indo-China. The portrait of Conrad himself was shot by legendary photojournalist Tim Page on April 6 1970, mere hours before Conrad's crossing into Cambodia and subsequent disappearance.
A selection of frames from Apocalypse Now (1974) directed by George Lucas and released by American Zoetrope. Written by John Milius with the working title The Psychedelic Soldier and inspired by Joseph Conrad's novella Heart of Darkness, the film starred Steve McQueen as Captain Willard, a US Army Ranger attached to MACVSOG, whose surrealistic and seemingly pointless mission into Cambodia is plagued by the spectral presence of a Viet Cong sniper dubbed "One-Eyed Jack", played by Tad Horino.
Remarkably, Lucas and a small crew traveled to the Republic of Vietnam in 1971 and, posing as Irish documentary film-makers, were able to film US and ARVN combat operations for the project. Producer Francis Ford Coppola balked at sending the complete crew and cast into a war zone and the scripted portions were consequently shot in the summer of 1972 among the hills of Santa Clarita north of Los Angeles, a reasonable match for Vietnam during the dry season.
