As I took my seat in the cinema on Thursday night, I thought just how far I've come politically in the past couple of years. I have gotten to the point where I have absolutely no desire to be sitting in a room full of liberal oddballs. Unremarkable? Well, you should understand that just a few years ago I was a dyed in the wool college activist type, and at that point, a roomful of liberal nutjobs was my bread and butter, the sort of place that felt like home.

On Thursday, after filmmaker Patricia Foulkrod introduced her new documentary The Ground Truth, she let a pro-Kerry filmmaker speak for a moment about the film Going Upriver, screening in the cinema next door. The audience was asked if there were any questions. When a woman popped up and asked a confrontational question about whether people really ought to be supporting Kerry, I had my revelation: these are no longer my people. When it was announced that there would be a song performed at the end of the screening, my friend gripped my leg: "oh please, no songs," he hissed. I couldn't answer; I was too busy hoping the evening wouldn't come to token ethnic minority dancers demonstrating their commitment to diversity with a touching, if not strictly relevant, indigenous floor-show. Please, God don't let them trot out the dancers, I thought to myself. I can't tell you how many left-wing fetes I've attended where the audience has been made to endure tenuously related dance routines.

But alas, my fears were unfounded: the angry woman who seemed insistent on making a scene about Kerry was very much in the minority, and the rest of the audience members who asked questions were thoughtful, intelligent, and far less belligerent - which I always find to be a good tone at an anti-war event. The song, sneakily placed before the panel discussion so as to make early departure impossible, was not half as crunchy as it might have been, and thankfully, there were no dancers. The film was moving and well put-together.

The Ground Truth is a 30 minute documentary comprised of interviews with soldiers in Iraq, as well as interviews with the director of the National Gulf War Resource Center, a non-profit organization fighting for veterans rights, the director of Operation Truth, an organization which aims to document the stories of the soldiers returning from the present conflict in Iraq, and some of the leaders of Arlington West, a weekly vigil in Santa Monica where activists put up a cross for every American soldier who has died in the Iraqi conflict so far on the beach in Santa Monica.

The most inspiring moment of the evening came in the introduction, when Foulkrod told the audience of how tired she was of the whining about everything that could not be shown in the American media. She insists that this nay saying is counterproductive and defeatist: "it's not like we're powerless," she told the audience. Foulkrod speaks with authority on the issue, having spent the past eight months making this documentary, starting out with only with a passion that these stories need to be told.