A Permanent Mark: Agent Orange in America and Vietnam

On September 11, 1999, my mother, Janet, married Bob Macher. Tragically, four years later, Bob died from non-Hodgkins lymphoma, a disease caused by his exposure to Agent Orange more than 35 years earlier in the Vietnam War. My mother represents hundreds of thousands of people, Americans and Vietnamese, whose shared story of being permanently marked by Agent Orange must be told.

A Permanent Mark: Agent Orange in America and Vietnam is a documentary for national broadcast that fully integrates the story of Americans exposed to Agent Orange with the story of Vietnamese people still contending with the toxic herbicide.

While A Permanent Mark is about events that have their origin in the Vietnam War, the film deals with universal themes of war that are relevant today. A Permanent Mark shows that war persists, long after we declare “mission accomplished.”

My crew and I finished shooting A Permanent Mark footage in Vietnam on November 1, 2008. My new focus for 2009 is to begin editing the film.

—Holly Million
Director, A Permanent Mark: Agent Orange in America and Vietnam