Knocking is a 2006 documentary film directed by Joel Engardio

Joel Engardio

Joel P. Engardio is a candidate for San Francisco District 7 Supervisor. The election is November 6, 2012. Engardio has previously worked as a writer, documentary filmmaker and civil liberties advocate . His journalism work includes print, television and independent film...

  and Tom Shepard that focuses on the civil liberties fought for by Jehovah's Witnesses

Jehovah's Witnesses

Jehovah's Witnesses is a millenarian restorationist Christian denomination with nontrinitarian beliefs distinct from mainstream Christianity. The religion reports worldwide membership of over 7 million adherents involved in evangelism, convention attendance of over 12 million, and annual...

. It focuses primarily on the stories of three Jehovah's Witnesses, and how their lives demonstrate three fundamental Witness teachings that have affected society in general: Conscientious objection

Conscientious objector

A conscientious objector is an "individual who has claimed the right to refuse to perform military service" on the grounds of freedom of thought, conscience, and/or religion....

, and rejection of blood transfusion

Blood transfusion

Blood transfusion is the process of receiving blood products into one's circulation intravenously. Transfusions are used in a variety of medical conditions to replace lost components of the blood...

s and saluting the flag

Bellamy salute

The Bellamy salute is the salute described by Francis Bellamy to accompany the American Pledge of Allegiance, which he had authored. During the period when it was used with the Pledge of Allegiance, it was sometimes known as the "flag salute"...

.

Knocking won the jury award for best documentary at the 2006 USA Film Festival in Dallas and the audience award for best documentary at the 2006 Indianapolis International Film Festival. It has been shown at film festivals in Trenton, New Jersey

Trenton, New Jersey

Trenton is the capital of the U.S. state of New Jersey and the county seat of Mercer County. As of the 2010 United States Census, Trenton had a population of 84,913...

; Flint, Michigan

Flint, Michigan

Flint is a city in the U.S. state of Michigan and is located along the Flint River, northwest of Detroit. The U.S. Census Bureau reports the 2010 population to be placed at 102,434, making Flint the seventh largest city in Michigan. It is the county seat of Genesee County which lies in the...

; Cleveland, Ohio

Cleveland, Ohio

Cleveland is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and is the county seat of Cuyahoga County, the most populous county in the state. The city is located in northeastern Ohio on the southern shore of Lake Erie, approximately west of the Pennsylvania border...

; Reno, Nevada

Reno, Nevada

Reno is the county seat of Washoe County, Nevada, United States. The city has a population of about 220,500 and is the most populous Nevada city outside of the Las Vegas metropolitan area...

; East Lansing, Michigan

East Lansing, Michigan

East Lansing is a city in the U.S. state of Michigan. The city is located directly east of Lansing, Michigan, the state's capital. Most of the city is within Ingham County, though a small portion lies in Clinton County. The population was 48,579 at the time of the 2010 census, an increase from...

.

Knocking was first televised on the PBS

Public Broadcasting Service

The Public Broadcasting Service is an American non-profit public broadcasting television network with 354 member TV stations in the United States which hold collective ownership. Its headquarters is in Arlington, Virginia....

 series Independent Lens

Independent Lens

Airing weekly on PBS through ITVS, the Emmy Award-winning series Independent Lens introduces new drama and documentary films made by independent filmmakers. Past seasons of Independent Lens have been presented by hosts Angela Bassett, Don Cheadle, Susan Sarandon, Edie Falco, Terrence Howard, Maggie...

on May 22, 2007. It was also broadcast on the Australian television program Compass

Compass (TV program)

Compass is an Australian weekly news-documentary program screened on ABC Television on Sunday nights. Presented by Geraldine Doogue, the program is devoted to providing information about faith, values, ethics, and religion from across the globe....

on May 18, 2008. The documentary is also available on DVD

DVD

A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....

.

Main characters

Lillian Gobitas: As a girl in Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania

The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a U.S. state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The state borders Delaware and Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York and Ontario, Canada, to the north, and New Jersey to...

, she and thousands of other Witness children's refusal to salute the flag of the United States

Flag of the United States

The national flag of the United States of America consists of thirteen equal horizontal stripes of red alternating with white, with a blue rectangle in the canton bearing fifty small, white, five-pointed stars arranged in nine offset horizontal rows of six stars alternating with rows...

 initiated controversy that led to a pivotal U.S. Supreme Court ruling on freedom of religion

Freedom of religion

Freedom of religion is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or community, in public or private, to manifest religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship, and observance; the concept is generally recognized also to include the freedom to change religion or not to follow any...

.

Joseph Kempler: Born a Jew

Judaism

Judaism ) is the "religion, philosophy, and way of life" of the Jewish people...

, he converted to the Jehovah's Witness faith after observing their integrity alongside Jews in Nazi concentration camps

Nazi concentration camps

Nazi Germany maintained concentration camps throughout the territories it controlled. The first Nazi concentration camps set up in Germany were greatly expanded after the Reichstag fire of 1933, and were intended to hold political prisoners and opponents of the regime...

 during World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

. After converting

Religious conversion

Religious conversion is the adoption of a new religion that differs from the convert's previous religion. Changing from one denomination to another within the same religion is usually described as reaffiliation rather than conversion.People convert to a different religion for various reasons,...

, Kempler remained distant from his daughter who had been raised by Jewish relatives. To draw his family closer together, Kempler took them on a trip to Europe

Europe

Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

 to see his home country and visit the Melk

Melk

Melk is a city of Austria, in the federal state of Lower Austria, next to the Wachau valley along the Danube. Melk has a population of 5,222 ....

 and Auschwitz concentration camps.

Seth Thomas: A 23-year-old Witness who, despite the risk and opposition from non-Witness relatives, refused blood transfusion

Blood transfusion

Blood transfusion is the process of receiving blood products into one's circulation intravenously. Transfusions are used in a variety of medical conditions to replace lost components of the blood...

s with his liver transplant

Liver transplantation

Liver transplantation or hepatic transplantation is the replacement of a diseased liver with a healthy liver allograft. The most commonly used technique is orthotopic transplantation, in which the native liver is removed and replaced by the donor organ in the same anatomic location as the original...

 operation. While initially refused treatment by the Baylor University Medical Center

Baylor University Medical Center

Baylor University Medical Center at Dallas is a faith-based, not-for-profit hospital. In 1903, the hospital opened with 25 beds; today it is a patient care, teaching and research center for the Southwest. Baylor Dallas has 1025 licensed beds and serves as the flagship hospital of Baylor Health...

 of Texas

Texas

Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...

, surgeons with the University of Southern California University Hospital

Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center

Los Angeles County+USC Medical Center, also known as County/USC, by the abbreviation LAC+USC, or by the name Los Angeles County General, is a 600-bed public teaching hospital located in the Boyle Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles, California...

 in Los Angeles

Los Ángeles

Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...

 agreed to perform the operation, believing that research in bloodless surgery

Bloodless surgery

Bloodless surgery is a term that was popularized at the beginning of the 20th century by the practice of an internationally famous orthopedic surgeon, Adolf Lorenz, who was known as "the bloodless surgeon of Vienna." This expression reflected Lorenz's methods for treating patients with noninvasive...

 is necessary and should be explored.

DVD lecture series

The DVD includes a series of lectures pertaining to Jehovah's Witnesses in which lawyers, doctors, historians and Witness elders discuss various topics including blood transfusions, Witness legal rights and their legal history, Witnesses during Nazi Germany and the Holocaust and internal matters within congregations of Jehovah's Witnesses.

Film Festival awards

• Best Documentary, Jury Award, 2006 USA Film Festival (Dallas)
• Best Documentary, Jury Award, 2006 Trenton Film Festival (New Jersey)
• Best Documentary, Audience Award, 2006 Indianapolis International Film Festival
• Best First Film, Jury Award, 2006 Long Island International Film Expo (New York)
• Official Selection, 2006 Cleveland International Film Festival

External links

• Official site
• Knocking site for Independent Lens
  Independent Lens
  Airing weekly on PBS through ITVS, the Emmy Award-winning series Independent Lens introduces new drama and documentary films made by independent filmmakers. Past seasons of Independent Lens have been presented by hosts Angela Bassett, Don Cheadle, Susan Sarandon, Edie Falco, Terrence Howard, Maggie...
  
   on PBS
  Public Broadcasting Service
  The Public Broadcasting Service is an American non-profit public broadcasting television network with 354 member TV stations in the United States which hold collective ownership. Its headquarters is in Arlington, Virginia....
  
  
• Knocking Study Guide PDF