On October 21, 1967, 100,000 protesters march through West Potomac Park in Washington DC in the well-organized “Mobilization to End the War in Vietnam” protest. Subsequently 35,000 of these protestors take direct action by marching on the Pentagon to be met by armed soldiers and riot police.

The Sixth Side of the Pentagon is a sympathetic account of the historic march on the Pentagon, featuring dramatic eyewitness footage of an event that marked a turning point in the American attitude towards the Vietnam war. Filming within the crowd, Marker and Reichenbach get dangerously close to the action, as the protesters rush the barricades around the Pentagon building before being pushed back by nervous young recruits. Marker effectively counterpoints the violence of the visuals with a characteristically dry narration. Of protestors attempting to exorcise evil from the Pentagon, he comments: “They had asked permission from the authorities to have the Pentagon levitated up to three hundred yards above the ground. They received permission for only ten yards.”