On May 17, 1968 nine Vietnam War protesters, including a nurse, an artist and three priests, walked into a Catonsville, Maryland draft board office, grabbed hundreds of selective service records and incinerated them with homemade napalm. INVESTIGATION OF A FLAME is an intimate look at this unlikely, disparate band of resisters - the Catonsville Nine as they came to be known - who broke the law in a poetic act of civil disobedience. The publicity and news coverage from the ensuing trial helped galvanize an increasingly disillusioned American public. INVESTIGATION OF A FLAME explores this protest - an action more common in the 1960's - within the context of these extremely different times, times in which foes of Middle East peace agreements, abortion and technology resort to violence to access the public imagination.
