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What happened in April 2013: news and events relating to Vietnamese at home and in the diaspora.

It’s time for our second subscriber drive. We’re looking for 100 new subscribers for diaCRITICS, and we’ll be giving away prizes to the 25th, 50th, 75th, and 100th new subscribers. Read more details.

Events

• The 9th annual Asian Heritage Street Celebration, Saturday, May 18, 2013, will have all types of Asian ethnic groups, including Vietnamese.

• May is Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. [WH]

Viet Kieu in the news

• Andrew Lam reflects on the Vietnamese diaspora.

• Vietnamese Australian lawyer Hoi Trinh reflects on events after April 1975.

• Bone marrow recipient, Vicky Tran, meets her donor. [NBC]

• Vietnamese-American actress Huong Hoang lost privacy case against the Internet Movie Database. [Photo by Huong Hoang]

• The San Francisco Global Vietnamese Film Festival (April 26-28, 2013) had showcased many Vietnamese filmmakers in Việt Nam and in the diaspora. [AW]

• A Vietnamese American reflects about looking back or not looking back and about hoping “not to be consumed.”

• Charles Phan is among the winners of the IACP Awards. He was also involved with Mission Dolores Academy’s annual benefit luncheon.

• Vietnamese Artist Coco Holds Gallery Show. [Photo by Patrick McMullan]

• Human rights campaigners testified on Vietnam’s human rights situation at a House Foreign Affairs Committee.

• Hui Danh, on behalf of her sister, testified before a global human rights panel of the U.S. House of Representatives. [Photo by RFA]

• Thao Nguyen performed “We The Common” from her “Thao & The Get down Stay Down” album.

•A U.S. bipartisan commission proposed that the State Department blacklist Vietnam because of its violations of religious freedoms. Read a related story.

News about Vietnam

• Some schools in Vietnam are experimenting with bilingual education for Khmer, Hmong and Jarai students. [Photo by Truong Viet Hung/Unicef Vietnam]

• A new metro system for Vietnam would provide an efficient mass transportation and would “be a more potent symbol of modernization.” [ANN]

• Vietnamese pregnant women are concerned about about birth defects from Agent Orange, an example of the American’s so-called “high value for human lives.” [Photo by Hoang Dinh Nam/AFP/Getty Images]

• Hanoi’s legendary colonial hotel, the Metropole, has opened its discovered bomb shelter to daily tours. [Photo by David Lamb]

• Vietnam’s gender imbalance poses “a real threat to the country’s future socioeconomic development and social welfare.”

• The Health Ministry and some other government agencies advocate same-sex marriages, “since it is a human right.”

• Two Vietnamese boys were killed and six children were by old mortar shell left by Americans during the Second Indochina War. [VBN]

• With nearly 70% of HCMC vulnerable to extreme flooding, flood risks are rising in the city’s lower-lying districts. [Photo by Alamy]

• With rising unemployment and increasing government corruption, “Vietnam is directionless.”

• Contention between officials over dam water adds to severity of drought in central Vietnam

• Without explanation, a “gang” of plainclothes agents blockaded monks in the Giac Hoa Pagoda.

• Researchers have discovered a system of lava caves in the southern province of Dong Nai, Vietnam. [VNB]

• A report shows Cambodia, Laos, Burma, Thailand and Vietnam have lost nearly 40m hectares (ha) of forest cover since 1980. [VOA] [Photo by Adam Oswell]

• Vietnam launched its first remote sensing satellite, VNREDSat-1. Plan for a second satellite is announced. [ST]

• Once again, so called Chinese “doctors” are found practicing without practitioners’ licenses and selling unapproved medicine in HCMC.

• Complaints from Van Giang’s residents concerning the government seizure of their farmland have not yet been addressed by officials. [Photo by a citizen journalist]

• Vietnamese consumers boycott drinking Coca-Cola, which has been evading paying taxes in Vietnam.

• The Central Highlands offers many delicious cuisines with special flavors.

• Some photos show Vietnam moving towards modernization after April 30, 1975.

• Photos of some people working in Hanoi’s Old Quarter. {photo by VOV]

• Russia has agreed to help train the Vietnamese Navy and build new ships for Vietnam as Hanoi seeks to counterbalance China’s maritime aggression. [Photo by AFP]

•HCM City’s Nutrition Programme for 2013-15 will combat rising child obesity.

• Proof that the Chinese have already invaded and taken over Vietnam.

Other News

• The film Apocalypse Now inadvertently created the Philippines’ surfing culture.

• A Chinese ship carrying Chinese tourists–known to everyone as saboteurs, spies and soldiers–headed for the disputed Paracels islands.

• A researcher at the American Museum of Natural History details her discoveries at the Na Hang Nature Reserve. [Photo by Minh Le]

• A Belgian couple makes a home for themselves in “an alternate universe” on the outskirts of HCMC. [Photo by Marcel Lam]

• See an interactive map of racist and other hateful Tweets in America. Click on “Racist” at the top of the map. Read the article about the map.

• Artist Jane Irish‘s artworks in her “Sông Hương: Withdrawing Room” exhibition depict “actual places along the Sông Hương river.”

• Trader Joe’s offers its own Sriracha brand. [Photo by Michelle Woo]

• Surveys revealed stress rankings among the fifty states.

• A Verizon annual report cites Chinese cyber-espionage is rising.

• A writer opines on the dangers of waiving constitutional rights.

Special thanks to Viet Thanh Nguyen for providing many of the news items.

Peace!
RP

please like, share, and comment on this post! What Happened in April 2013: Some News and Events

How do you celebrate April 30? Do you? In this post, Khanh Ho discusses some of the hazards of looking backwards.

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I often forget this day: the day my family became stateless people and began the process of drifting that would eventually have us wash up on the shores of these United States.  April 30 marks the anniversary of the evacuation of Vietnamese from what was once their home country: a moment that dispersed us to far flung places—Paris and Berlin, Louisiana and Minnesota, Hong Kong and Manila. We ended up in refugee camps and suburbs and bayous—so many different places, it is hard to imagine the sheer variety of circumstances such a major upheaval could precipitate: like the phenotypes of plant life in the Amazon rain forest, each Vietnamese experience, after the Fall of Saigon, is stunning in its adaptations to micro-climates and sea changes.

I’ve never really thought to commemorate this moment. Indeed, my family never observes it, even though it is no doubt, a major milestone. You see: the first thing I learned about survival as a displaced person—as a cultural alien   was that people died if they looked back. They turned into a pillar of salt. It happened to my family chauffeur: he was so sad about a lost love left behind, he drove his car into a tree. It happened to a whole generation of old folks who still hold national Congresses to pick at a scab that will no longer give up blood.

But Facebook has allowed me to become connected with other people’s obsessions and, now, I see that a good portion of my Vietnamese American friends (those born in my generation, those who came over as babies) are observing this moment by replacing black-and-white images on their profile pictures: at least for the flicker of a digital moment, they are embracing the trauma. I wonder if this is precisely because they can now afford to look back?

I had two uncles: both dashing, both military men. One decided to go dancing; the other, to play tennis. This was in the moments leading up to the Fall of Saigon. And so they missed the boat, quite literally. When they got home, everybody had left. The house was empty. They ended up doing roughly two decades of hard labor in a reeducation camp.

When they were finally freed, they immigrated to the United States. One uncle got married to a young woman half his age from a region famous for beautiful, nubile women.  The other uncle never quite settled in; he always had a dreamy quality in his eyes, like someone always looking back: a rheumatic look. One uncle got fat. The other, thin. One uncle popped out children. The other remained a bachelor. He chain-smoked cigarettes and then died not long after he arrived in the United States.

Those uncles were always cautionary tales of my childhood: people who loomed large and yet, paradoxically, were a physical non-presence in my life. I didn’t meet them until my junior year of college. Still, they were symbols of a conscious choice that had to be made:  to live in the past or to accept the present. For me, it was a stark choice—like in that story “The lady or the tiger.” You opened one of two doors in life. You walked into a room. You had very little control over what you might find: a beautiful woman or a terrible tiger. You just wished that you would not enter a room in which you are consumed.

please like, share, and comment on this post! April 30: Looking Backward

The 6^th biannual Vietnamese International Film Festival in Orange County has officially spread its reputation to the Midwest. Flying in from Indiana, Anvi Hoàng attended the first week of the festival with fresh eyes. For those of you who have kept a distance from Vietnamese films, it is time to come back. Read Anvi’s review and judge for yourself. Scroll down for the English version that follows the Vietnamese one.

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Đại Hội Điện Ảnh Việt Nam Quốc Tế, đến lần thứ 6 này, đã thật sự có tiếng vang đến tận vùng Trung Tây nước Mỹ. Từ Indiana, Anvi Hoàng bay sang Quận Cam tham dự tuần đầu của liên hoan phim. Qúy vị nào lâu này “giữ khoảng cách” với phim Việt Nam, đã đến lúc quay trở lại rồi. Xin mời đọc bài điểm phim dưới đây sẽ rõ. Bài tiếng Anh theo sau bài tiếng Việt.

Tôi đến Đại Hội Điện Ảnh Việt Nam Quốc Tế (Vietnamese International Film Festival gọi tắt là ViFF) không trông đợi gì. Tôi xem phim. Rồi tôi bị chinh phục. Tôi không những nể nang công sức mà các nhà tổ chức và người tình nguyện đã đổ vào liên hoan phim kéo dài hai tuần lễ này, mà còn thích thú thưởng thức những bộ phim hay được chiếu ở đây.

Một chút về phim truyện dài

Trước khi liên hoan phim bắt đầu, tin tức và các buổi phỏng vấn trên báo, đài, TV thường nhắc đến một số phim truyện dài cho buổi Khai mạc và Bế mạc. Thôi thì tôi cũng nhắc lại ở đây.

Ai thích giải trí nhẹ nhàng, muốn cười thư giãn, không muốn suy nghĩ nhức đầu, hoặc muốn xem chuyện tình éo le đầy máu me, xin mời xem các phim truyện dài. Beyond the Mat – đạo diễn Van Phạm, Thiên Mệnh Anh Hùng (Blood Letter) – đạo diễn Victor Vũ, Cưới Ngay Kẻo Lỡ (Love Puzzle) – đạo diễn Charlie Nguyễn, Lấy Chồng Người Ta (In the Name of Love) – đạo diễn Lưu Huỳnh, Đó… Hay Đây? (Here… or There?) – đạo diễn Síu Phạm, Vũ Điệu Đường Cong (Instant Noodle) – đạo diễn Khoa Trọng Nguyễn, đều là phim truyện dài. Một điểm chung của những phim này là chúng đều do các đạo diễn Việt Kiều thực hiện. Trừ phim Beyond the Mat và Đó… Hay Đây?, các phim còn lại là nói tiếng Việt. Tuy nhiên, tính chất Việt Nam trong mỗi phim đó, từ cách ăn mặc, cách nói năng, cách suy nghĩ, cách cư xử kiểu Việt Nam thì thay đổi ít nhiều tùy theo từng phim, và tùy cách từng đạo diễn cảm nhận thế nào là ‘Việt Nam’. Làm tôi thật thắc mắc không biết các phim này có đắc khách lúc được chiếu ở Việt Nam hay không, và người Việt trong nước nghĩ gì về chúng.

Trao đổi với đạo diễn Nguyễn Trọng Khoa (ngồi giữa) về phim Vũ Điệu Đường Cong (Instant Noodle).

Tha hồ phim ngắn nghệ thuật

Đối với những người muốn biết và thích suy nghĩ về các vấn đề văn hóa, xã hội, con người Việt Nam, các phim ngắn sẽ làm hài lòng quý vị. Những phim ngắn này từ 8 phút đến 22 phút. Chúng mang tính nghệ thuật cao. Các chi tiết đều được suy nghĩ và tính toán kỹ, và mang ý nghĩa tượng trưng cao. Về nội dung, chúng miêu tả từ cảnh nghèo của cai nghiện trong Chung Sống (Living Together) – đạo diễn Đặng Đức Lộc, đến nghèo đơn chiếc trong Sữa Mẹ (Mother’s Milk) – đạo diễn Andy Dejohn. Phim mang tựa “16:30” của đạo diễn Trần Dũng Thanh Huy lại là câu chuyện bất ngờ, và có thể là mới biết lần đầu đối với nhiều người, về cuộc sống của các trẻ em bụi đời lăn lộn bán vé dò (là tờ kết quả số đề) kiếm cơm hàng ngày. Một bức tranh thực tế sống động, tội nghiệp, cảm động và đẹp.

Trao đổi với đạo diễn Andy Dejohn (giữa phải) về phim Sữa Mẹ (Mother’s Milk) và Giám Đốc Yxine Marcus Vũ Mạnh Cường (giữa trái).

Tình cảm con người với những thách thức trong cuộc sống hàng ngày là một mảng đề tài khác. Một người cha già đơn chiếc lo lắng cho con gái lớn như thế nào, đạo diễn Lê Hà Nguyên miêu tả nó trong Những Mùa Đông Khác (The Other Winters). Cảnh quay một đôi giày hoặc hai đôi giày được lặp đi lặp lại, đưa khán giả vào trong cuộc sống tình cảm của hai cha con họ, mỗi người một lối sống một thế hệ khác nhau. Nhưng một đứa con trai lớn thì suy nghĩ lại và thay đổi cách sống và tình cảm đối với mẹ (đã mất) nhờ vào cái gì đây? Phim hoạt hình Năm Điều Phạt (Five Punishments) của đạo diễn Dương Minh Lộc cho anh chàng nhân vật chính cơ hội vô tình này.

Chưa chìm vào trạng thái suy nghĩ miên man được bao lâu thì khán giả bị Một Ngày của đạo diễn Nguyễn Vũ Minh Đức đánh thức. Bộ phim bắt đầu với câu chuyện một anh chàng cứ lết cái xẻng đi từ nơi này qua nơi khác. Phải chăng anh ta là một kẻ giết người? Dễ đoán như thế thì còn gì là phim hay. Hóa ra anh ta dùng cái xẻng để đào mồ, lôi lên một cô người yêu … nửa sống nửa chết. Tình yêu zombie ấy mà! Không tài nào đoán ra. Hấp dẫn và lôi cuốn khán giả cả 20 phút mà không cần nhiều lời như thế, đúng là hay.

Một khía cạnh khác trong tình cảm con người diễn ra trong phim Bán Sách Và Bán Giày (Bookseller and Shoe Seller) của đạo diễn Nguyễn Trí Viễn. Ông bán sách và ông bán giày thì có gì chung? Họ đều là buôn gánh bán rong kiếm cơm qua ngày. Ngồi sát nhau trên một vỉa hè, cùng bị du côn bắt nạt mà không gíup đỡ lẫn nhau thì chỉ làm cho cuộc sống của nhau thêm khốn khổ. Chi bằng bắt tay cười trừ làm bạn cho vui tháng vui ngày. Phim kết thúc với một chi tiết mang tính triết lý sâu sắc: ông bán giày chính là người dạy cho ông bán sách một điều ông học được trong sách. Cuộc sống đôi khi đầy nghịch lý đến thế là cùng!

Cảnh trong phim Bán Sách Và Bán Giày – Hình từ trang web của ViFF.

Tư tưởng mới hợp thời đại

Ngẫm nghĩ tới lui, một điểm chung được tìm thấy trong nhiều phim ngắn và một số phim dài là cách miêu tả hình tượng nhân vật đàn ông trong các phim. Ở đây, ông nào ông nấy lo làm ăn hết mình. Có lười như anh bán đá lạnh trong Chở Đá Đi Chơi (Go Playing with Ice) của đạo diễn Trần Ngọc Sáng cuối cùng cũng phải thay đổi để trở thành người chồng người cha có trách nhiệm. Nhẹ nhàng và biết chăm lo, những người đàn ông trong phim đang tạo lập lại các mối quan hệ của họ với vợ con, với xã hội, trong hoàn cảnh một nước Việt Nam đang ‘trăn trở’ ở thế kỷ 21.

Ngoài ra, thật vui là các vấn đề xã hội bức xúc như bắt nạt trong trường học (bully), hoặc vấn đề đồng tính đã được các phim ngắn Việt Nam xử lý rất hay và nghệ thuật. Trực Nhật Với Thư Kỳ (On Duty with Shi Qi) làm khán giả vừa tức giận với bọn ỷ đông ăn hiếp lẻ, vừa cảm thương với Hoa, cô bé mơ mộng và ăn diện khác người. Thông điệp của đạo diễn Đỗ Quốc Trung về việc bắt nạt cả về thể chất và tinh thần người khác như thế là quá rõ ràng.

Cảnh trong phim Trực Nhật Với Thư Kỳ – Hình từ trang web của ViFF.

Dawn của đạo diễn Leon Lê dựng cảnh sống ồn ào ở New York, đưa khán giả vào ngay một xe điện ngầm đang chạy băng băng, ồn điếc tai. Trong khi đó Hai Chú Cháu (Uncle and Nephew) của đạo diễn Nguyễn Đình Anh nhẹ nhàng đưa khán giả qua con sông yên lành đến với cảnh nhà quê thơ mộng của Việt Nam. Ở Dawn, sự bạo hành trong cảnh trấn lột bên ngoài nhà ga kết thúc một cách êm đẹp khi có sự nhận thức về mối quan hệ đồng tính giữa một người Mỹ gốc Á và một người Mỹ đen. Trong khi đó, cuộc sống tưởng như an lành của hai chú cháu Hùng ở quê lại chấm dứt một cách đau lòng khi người cháu không chịu đựng được nữa tính bạo lực trong lời nói châm chọc của những người hàng xóm nhiều chuyện về hoàn cảnh của chú mình. Hai chú cháu cuối cùng lạc mất vào một chốn nào đó ở Sài Gòn náo nhiệt đầy bon chen.

Tuần một của liên hoan phim kết thúc. Phim truyện dài có nhiều phần ‘thú vị’, và phim ngắn thì mới mẻ, sống động. Làm tôi muốn đi xem tuần phim thứ hai…

* Bài đã đăng trên Nhật Báo Viễn Đông.

–

Anvi Hoàng viết thuần thục cả tiếng Anh và tiếng Việt. Có bằng thạc sĩ ngành Lịch sử, Nghiên cứu về Hoa Kỳ, Sức khỏe cộng đồng. Viết để tung hô người Việt khắp nơi. Anvi thích khám phá thế giới ‘chân trong chân ngoài’ mà cô đang sống, và thích nước. Cô sống ở thành phố Bloomington, thuộc tiểu bang Indiana.

Cảnh bên trong và bên ngoài rạp Edwards Cinemas trong khuôn viên trường đại học UC Irvine tại buổi khai mạc Đại Hội Điện Ảnh Việt Nam Quốc Tế ngày 4/4/2013 – Inside and outside Edwards Cinemas, UC Irvine, on the Opening night of ViFF, April 4, 2013.

Long, or Short? – Feeling the Films at ViFF

I came to the Vietnamese International Film Festival (ViFF) with no expectations. I saw. I was conquered. Not only was I impressed by all the efforts of the organizers and volunteers put together to host such an incredible two-week festival but I also had a great time watching the films.

A Little on Long

On the local newspapers, television and radio news and interviews around Orange County leading up to the festival, it seemed that some feature films were mentioned all the time, one for the opening night and others for the closing. I might as well spend a few words on them.

One element of consistency in these films screened during the first week of the festival (April 4-7, 2013) might, or might not, come out as a surprise to the audience. They are all directed by overseas Vietnamese. And except for Beyond the Mat by Van Phạm and Here… or There? (Đó… Hay Đây?) by Síu Phạm, the rest of them – Blood Letter (Thiên Mệnh Anh Hùng) by Victor Vũ, Love Puzzle (Cưới Ngay Kẻo Lỡ ) by Charlie Nguyễn, In the Name of Love (Lấy Chồng Người Ta) by Lưu Huỳnh, and Instant Noodle (Vũ Điệu Đường Cong) by Khoa Trọng Nguyễn – have mostly Vietnamese casts. The degree of Vietnamese-ness in the characters’  dressing, speaking, behaving, thinking and moving around carrying out their daily lives vary from one film to the next. This speaks volumes for what each director perceives as ‘authentic Vietnamese.’ It really made me very curious about the movies’ box-office and media reception in Việt Nam.

Q&A with director Khoa Trọng Nguyễn (center) on Instant Noodle (Vũ Điệu Đường Cong).

What really left a strong and lasting impression on me, however, was the two sets of short films that I watched the first week of the festival. It is here that cinema lovers have their thirst quenched.

All about Short

Ranging from eight minutes to twenty-two minutes, the short films are embedded with carefully calculated details that deliver their highly symbolic cultural and social messages. Different shades of poverty were portrayed. One focuses on addiction as in Living Together (Chung Sống) by Đặng Đức Lộc, another on helplessness as in Mother’s Milk (Sữa Mẹ) by Andy Dejohn. 16:30 by Trần Dũng Thanh Huy then appears fresh and poignant as it brought the audience to a lesser known world of homeless kids who make a living selling result tickets. Raw as a documentary, 16:30 was as deeply disturbing as it was movingly beautiful.

A scene from the film 16:30 – Photo from ViFF website.

Shades of emotions were another targets of the short films. As the simple shot of one or two pairs of shoes was repeated, the audience gradually entered the relationship between a father – balloons vendor, and a daughter – red shoes wearer, in The Other Winters (Những Mùa Đông Khác) by Lê Hà Nguyên as they struggle to make their relation fit in with the lifestyle they carry and the generation they belong to. Following the same line of thought, director Dương Minh Lộc gave a mother-and-son relationship an animated twist in Five Punishments (Năm Điều Phạt) when he arranged to have the son come to new terms with himself at the discovery of the 50-year old note about daily chores his mother left him when he was a little boy.

A scene from the film One Day – Photo from ViFF website.

The pensive mood didn’t last long as the audience were jolted back to reality with One Day (Một Ngày) by Nguyễn Vũ Minh Đức. It starts with a guy dragging his shovel from one place to another. Is he a serial killer? That would be too easy a prediction that makes the film a very boring one. As the story progresses, it turns out that he uses the shovel to dig a grave from where his bride is from. A zombie love story, indeed. Who could have guessed! To keep the suspension and the audience’s attention for twenty minutes with very limited vocalization, that is good.

Still another side of everyday human relation is what happened between a bookseller and a shoe seller, in Bookseller and Shoe Seller (Bán Sách Và Bán Giày) by Nguyễn Trí Viễn. What do these sellers have in common? Street vendors on the same section of the pavement as they are, the bookseller and the shoe seller patched their differences to face the gangsters and had a hell of a time. I left the theater feeling enlightened with one brilliant detail from the film: the shoe seller eventually is the one who teaches the bookseller about something he learns from the books! Life could be full of ironies like this sometimes.

Hot pots of the day

Now that I have a chance to think twice about the sets of short films I watched, I came to realize that most of the male characters in them are constructive images of Vietnamese men who are trying to make the best out of life. As daydreaming and carefree as he is, the ice seller in Go Playing with Ice (Chở Đá Đi Chơi) by Trần Ngọc Sáng has to finally get his act together and turn a new page. Gentle and helpful, these men are building new relations with their wives, kids, and society in a context of undergoing changes in Việt Nam as it fidgets its position in the 21^st-century theater.

A scene from the film Go Playing With Ice – Photo from ViFF website.

Still on the same line of pulling issues onto the surface, Đỗ Quốc Trung’s short film, On Duty with Shu Qi (Trực Nhật Với Thư Kỳ), is as updated and trendy as it could be featuring a high-school outcast on high heels. His message against bullying at school, both physically and mentally to someone considered different, is loud and clear.

And now to the hottest topic of all: Việt Nam recently passed the law to recognize same sex marriage, which makes life easier for them all. Is it really? Dawn by Leon Lê and Uncle and Nephew (Hai Chú Cháu) by Nguyễn Đình Anh create a very good pair for contemplation as far as reception of homosexuality is concerned. Lê sweeps the audience off their feet to the noisy moving subway train in New York, and Nguyễn paddles them over the melodic river to the idyllic countryside of the Mekong Delta. And while the mop outside the station in New York ends unexpectedly with a realization of a homosexual relationship between an Asian American and an African American, the seemingly peaceful lives of Hùng and his nephew around the rice fields in Việt Nam is disrupted brokenheartedly when the latter could not bear the neighbors’ abusive jokes aimed at his uncle anymore. They both end up disappearing somewhere into the rumored violence-reeked Sài Gòn.

After the first week of the festival, I found the features ‘interesting,’ and the short films refreshing. I wish I had been able to attend the second week.

VIFF poster at Bowers Museum, Santa Ana.

–

Anvi Hoàng writes in both English and Vietnamese. She received her master’s degrees in American Studies, History, Health Promotion. What brings her happiness is freelancing. She makes it one aim to celebrate Vietnamese people everywhere in her writing. Anvi enjoys exploring the in-between worlds she is in, and loves water. She lives in Bloomington, IN.

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please like, share, and comment on this post! Anvi Hoàng: Ngắn hay Dài? – Feeling the Films at ViFF

Andrew X. Pham has had an interesting career. An engineer by training, he left his job to bike along the West Coast, where he caught a plane to Japan and eventually landed himself in Vietnam, his birth country, where he explored his roots. The memoir won the Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Prize and the Oregon Literature Prize and was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Since then, Pham has written a biography of his father, a cookbook, and a collection of essays. In addition to being a writer, he’s been a rice farmer, a food critic, and has now started Spoonwiz, an insightful and decisive dining resource that connects users with a trusted network of experts and savvy diners.

Pham is full of smiles as he is full of stories and wisdom. He was kind enough take time out of his busy schedule for a video interview about his career, his craft, and his current projects.

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You started as an aircraft engineer, then you left to become a writer—you went on a journey on the west coast and then you flew to Japan and then Vietnam. This resulted in Catfish and Mandala. What sparked that journey? How did you get started writing?

It took awhile. I went to undergrad, I did aerospace. At graduate school, I did both an MBA and an aerospace masters in orbital mechanics, but I quit in the middle of it as I wrote about in Catfish and Mandala. I really thought about my life after my sister passed away. I thought about what I wanted to do and I went about doing it, which was basically writing and traveling and trying a different life. Because it was hard and because I wasn’t qualified to do it and I had no talent whatsoever, I thought it was a good try.

Were you always interested in writing or was it something you just thought of doing?

I always wanted to write, but I think I was a better artist, a better painter. I always thought I was going to be an artist, but you know being an Asian guy with your parents and family and all that. And I’m really good at math and I’m really good at the technical stuff too, so it kind of just fell in my lap and I just went to school. Actually aerospace engineering—especially what I like, orbital mechanics—was very interesting, but I think my talent really lies in art and writing.

I enjoy writing because it’s, in some ways, the lowest form of art because everyone has access to this. You do not need a paintbrush or a canvas to write. It’s the largest common denominator: words belong to everyone. And certainly, English words didn’t belong to me being an immigrant. I certainly didn’t take any English classes in college. I thought that was the most challenging thing I could possibly do.

Did you learn anything from your engineering days that carried on to your writing?

Well, engineering and a lot of stuff, even writing, is about organizing and editing. In engineering, you basically have a blueprint of what you want to do and there’s a reason and logic of  how you walk through the steps to create something or to check on a process. Writing is a lot like that, I think.

What else did I learn from engineering? I didn’t like having a boss. That’s one thing I decided: I really didn’t like having a boss. When I went to work at United Airlines, I remember there was this big wall leading to the cafeteria and there were all these photographs on there of all the upper management, all the VP, all the directors, all the big wigs.  And then I saw there was one woman and one black guy. The rest of them were white. I was thinking, “Hmmm…The chances of me getting up there is pretty damn slim.” Corporate culture is—especially a company like United—is really old school. After a year or so, I certainly did see the challenge. I felt like I would just be a tiny cog in a big machine. I didn’t feel like I was doing anything important and if I didn’t come to work, no one was going to miss me. If I quit, they’d find some other guy. I thought life should be a little bit more than that.

So you went to writing.

Yeah. And even if I didn’t publish, I certainly would have enjoyed myself. And I did. It was good fun. It was good fun.

You’ve written that when you first gave your manuscript of Catfish and Mandala to an agent. The agent accepted it but he or she said they wanted to move it towards what was happening in Asian American literature at the time and you said you didn’t want to go with that agent because you didn’t want to change your manuscript so much. Do you think there’s a lot of pressure for Asian American writers to conform to particular narratives?

It used to be a lot more, but now I think Asian American writers have more choices. You should read Chang-Rae Lee. He wrote a couple of books and you can see the progression of his characters. His first protagonist was Korean American. I’m not sure about the last one, but he took on a lot more mainstream characters. I do think writers in general—regardless of race—you do have more choice now than you did before about what you write.

I simply didn’t want to go that way because I thought this was a really personal journey. To change it that way, to make it more marketable, make it more publishable, I wouldn’t have been true to the work. It took me a couple of years to write. The trip itself took me a year and it took me a long time to work up the courage to do it too. The book isn’t just a book, it’s about a whole chunk of life and it’s about all the people in it. It’s about some really deep themes not just for me but for others, for Asian Americans. I didn’t really feel like going the other route. It was a hard choice, but it didn’t take me long to decide. It was a very gut reaction of “No.”

In addition to being a writer, you’ve also self-published two e-books, A Culinary Odyssey and A Theory of Flight. What led you to the path of self-publishing? Would you recommend it to other writers?

About two years ago, I finished a book and I kind of had a bad experience with a new editor at a publishing house. It really made me think about the inequities of the writer-publisher relation. It made me pause. It made me look at publishing and the rights of writers in regard to their work as well as what they can do with their art. I started reading my publishing contract and I read up on all the rights the publishers demanded. I found so many cases where the writers are basically screwed quite badly.

So I said, you know, just for the heck of it, I’ve been meaning to put this cookbook together. But cookbooks these days, they don’t really make money, only if you’re a celebrity chef or somehow you hit the bestseller. A lot of companies don’t publish cookbooks anymore. But I wanted to do this thing and I had put it aside simply because I knew publishers would not make money on it so they’re not going to want it. So, hey—what the heck—I’ve always written for me so this was a book for myself.

The other work, one of my publishers offered to publish it a while ago. They made changes to it, again, to make it more marketable. I promptly said no. But the thing about writing is that once you’ve written something, for me anyway, I’m done. The creative instinct is gone and I’m kind of satiated. It sat at my computer for seven years and I never thought about it again. Then about two years ago, I said, “Hey, this stuff is good stuff. It’s some of the best stuff I’ve ever written, to me anyway.” So I decided to self-publish it. Although if I changed it, they would have published it years ago, I didn’t want to do that. It’s not something I do.

In addition to those works, I know you’re also working on a novel called The Japanese Officer: A Love Story. It’s based on your grandmother’s life. Can you tell me more about that work? Also, how does writing nonfiction compare to writing fiction?

I think fiction and nonfiction are very similar technique-wise.  It’s just about good writing. I actually wrote a fantasy novel, that was my very first book. That took about four and a half years. No one published it. I still have some version of it lying around.

My first instinct was to write fiction. I think Catfish and Mandala came out because there was something in me that had to be dealt with. I wrote The Eaves of Heaven because I knew people of my father’s generation were moving on, passing on, so it was important to preserve what they knew, what they remembered, their traditions, and their voices. No one really captured that generation. You see a lot of stuff before and then a lot of stuff after by younger people like myself and eventually your generation, but you don’t really see much about his generation—the every man, the Vietnamese American that went through all the wars. I felt like it was something I had to do.

I feel the same about The Japanese Officer. My grandma’s story is quite powerful.  She was captured and raped by some French officer and she had a son as a result of that. My uncle is half-French, half-Vietnamese. He’s still alive today in Vietnam. So it’s about that.

It’s more challenging because I’m trying to do it in her voice, in her mind. She passed away when I was forty years old.  I know a lot about her life. It wasn’t like I didn’t know her at all. I do have a lot of material.

Furthermore, I think writers have a fixed number of books in them. Some people know, some people don’t. But I’ve known from a long time ago how many books I’m going to write and I’m getting to the end. I have one more and I’m done! In a way, I’m taking my time. I like to savor it. I never really made much money from writing, but it did give me a chance to have a lot of fun. It gave me a chance to live on a shoestring budget and do pretty much whatever I want to do. For that, I’m appreciative of the craft. So yeah, the book is about my grandmother’s life. It’ll take a while, but that’s what they do.

I’m looking forward to it. I’m a big fan of your work and I’m interested in reading your fiction.

Well, it’s not really fiction, but it is fictional. They call it an “autobiographical novel.” So it’s kind of based on real events and real people, but it’s fiction in that you have to come up with dialogue and description and you have to crawl into their heads. But it’s pretty much based on true life events.

What advice do you have for writers who are starting today? Why should they be writing? What’s your bigger philosophy on the role of writing in society, and art in general?

Don’t do it! Go out and have some fun. This sucks, don’t do this stuff!

They all say, “Oh yeah, I’m writing for the better good of mankind blah blah blah…” But you just have to do it for yourself because that’s basically what you do.  If you’re a runner, you’re going to run. Even if there’s not a race, you’re going to run. That’s what you’re built to do, that’s what you’re god-given talent is. You’re just going to do it. That’s what writing is.

I just don’t know how publishing is going to go. It changes so much within the time that I’ve been in it. I think it’s unfair to tell writers that you’re going to make a lot of money and you’re going to have fame and all this stuff. Just do it and really enjoy the journey. If you’re not enjoying the journey, if it doesn’t make you excited, if you don’t wake up in the morning looking forward to sitting down to write, then don’t do it because life is way too short. I think a lot of people like the idea of being a writer, but they don’t actually like the work. It’s just nasty work: you’re sitting there, bleeding all over the computer and you’re hating yourself. Sometimes you feel brilliant, sometimes you feel worthless, and there’s years and years of work that you then throw out. If you don’t like that part, there are a lot of better ways to spend your time.

I think that’s really good advice and I like that you live by it too. On your website, you said you’re not only a writer, but a food critic, instructor, traveler, rice farmer. I love the life that you live! It’s so varied. It’s good advice.

You know, it’s a weird world that we’re moving into right now. You don’t know if you’ll make any money or which way publishing is going to go. Some self-published writers make a lot of money, and other really good writers are struggling. I’m actually launching a little start up right now. It’s for writers. You’ve probably seen it on my site. It’s called Spoonwiz.

Can you tell me a little bit more about Spoonwiz?

It’s a food site. I came up with this idea when I was going through self-publishing. I did a lot of study on the market and the publishing model. If you really look at e-publishing and online content, the writers make no money in the food space. I remember I used to write as a food critic at a newspaper. We used to get paid $500 for a review. They pay about $50 now, which is to say, they don’t pay anymore, so most people don’t write anymore. Food critics, restaurant critics— they don’t write anymore. They quit, or they move on to different businesses, different professions. Also, all the reviews on Yelp—you generate all this content and Yelp makes money, but you don’t make money.

Our platform is to give the author ownership of their materials, we don’t restrict them like Yelp or newspapers because if you write for a newspaper or magazine or even an online blog—they own your material. They can republish it, reuse it a hundred times and pay you nothing. That’s not us, you own your stuff. We’re a venue for writers to write about food and to keep the ownership of their articles and we give them shares in the company, at least initially anyway. It’s more of a cooperative for writers. According to our market study, there’s a market for what we offer.

What’s next for you?

Just this Spoonwiz. We’re looking for a copyeditor and a managing editor. That’s our big project right now. But other than that, launching this thing and see how it goes. So far, I’m getting a lot of attraction from professional writers and bloggers in the food arena. It’s exciting. I’ve never done this before. I’ve never owned a rice farm before, never lived on a sailboat before. Life is pretty short so you ought to do stuff you’ve never done or stuff that you’re curious about. I think having a start up is a once in a lifetime thing.

So your advice for people in general would be just do what you want?

Just be passionate about what you want.  If you’re not passionate, if you’re not willing to make sacrifices for it, then don’t bother. Because starting Spoonwiz, I also realize there’s a lot of people who say stuff—like “Yeah , I want to be involved,” but then the time comes and they don’t do it. For me, when I say something, I see it to the end. I just don’t give up. It’s very hard for me to give up. I don’t think it’s possible for me to give up.

After twenty years of speaking to writers and wannabe writers and aspiring writers—I used to tell them “Yeah, be a writer, follow your dream” and so on. These days, I just leave them alone. I mean, if you’re going to do it, you’re going to do it. You don’t need to ask me. Like I said, a runner’s going to run. They don’t go around asking people, “Should I run? Should I buy a pair of running shoes?” They just run. Even if you don’t have shoes, you’re going to run in your bare feet. And I think that’s the way it is with writers. You don’t need to ask for permission. Words belong to everyone.

Andrew X. Pham is an independent writer, instructor, culinary professional, and engineer. He holds a B.S. in Aerospace Engineering from the University of California, Los Angeles. His first book, Catfish and Mandala (1999), won the Kiriyama Prize, the Whiting Writers’ Award, Quality Paperback Book Prize, and the Oregon Literature Prize. It was also named a Guardian Prize Shortlist Finalist and a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. His second book, The Eaves of Heaven: A Life in Three Wars (2008)—an innovative biography written as a memoir—was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, a Los Angeles Times Favorite Books of 2008, a Washington Post Top Ten Books of the Year, a Oregonian Top Ten National Books of the Year, and a Bookmarks Magazine Best Books of 2008. Andrew also translated Last Night I Dreamed of Peace: The Diaries of Dr. Thuy Tram (2008) with his father. His poem “A Vision 9/11”—an architectural design rendered in prose (NPR, 17 Oct. 2001)—inspired multiple winning WTC designs. Andrew has also self-published two books, A Culinary Odyssey: A Southeast Asian Cookbook Diary of Travels, Flavors, and Memories and A Theory of Flight: Recollections, a collection of essays on life, love, loss, flight, and travel. He is working on the last book in his Vietnam trilogy, The Japanese Officer: A Love Story, an autobiographical novel based on his grandmother’s life (Knopf). He divides his time between California and the wooden bungalow he built on the Mekong River (on the Thai-Laos border) with his partner and two dogs.

Eric Nguyen has a degree in sociology from the University of Maryland along with a certificate in LGBT Studies. He is currently an MFA candidate at McNeese State University and lives in Louisiana.

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please like, share, and comment on this post! Interview with Andrew X. Pham: “Words Belong to Everyone”

The Top Ten most read posts of April 2013 on diaCRITICS. Read your favorites again. Or discover something you overlooked.

Here are the posts that got the most views, in ranked order, for April.

1. diaCRITICIZE: My Black April

2. Jade Hidle Reviews Marcelino Truong’s Une Si Jolie Petite Guerre

3. What Happened in March 2013: Some News and Events

4. Rose-tinted Lenses: Vietnam’s Pretty, Empty Movies

5. Author Interview with Monique Truong

6. San Francisco Global Vietnamese Film Festival 2013—Interview

7. Công Binh: The Forgotten Indochinese Workers in France

8. 1975: A Kickstarter Campaign for Contemporary Cambodian Art

9. Top Ten Most Critical of March 2013

10. Subscriber Drive! Subscribe or Refer New Readers and Win Prizes!

Be sure to check out the Top Ten Most Critical Posts of All Time for diaCRITICS.

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please like, share, and comment on this post! Top Ten Most Critical of April 2013

As many of you know, diaCRITICS periodically reposts blog entries from other blog sites. We are excited to share with you an interview conducted in March 2010 by Eric Brightwell of Amoeblog who questions some important figures from the new wave scene back in the ’80s about their love of new wave, how they got into the scene, and their take on it being referred to as “Vietnamese New Wave”–the defining cultural moment for young Vietnamese in America. The music that the young Vietnamese Americans listened to can still be heard today wherever Vietnamese gather all over the world, including in Viet Nam, where stores can still be found playing definitive bands like Modern Talking.

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Last November, Keep on Music threw a New Wave + ‘80s Reunion at Bleu in Westminster. This isn’t new wave in the sense that a lot of people use the term, but rather a mix of Italo, Eurodisco and other ‘80s dance music that notably found considerable popularity with Asian-Americans in the 1980s. I was only turned onto the scene four years ago, by Ngoc Nguyen, who is a Vietnamese New Wave super fan (especially of Sandra).

Flash forward to the present and near future: May 26. On that day, Keep On Music’s having a Back to the 80′s. An International 80′s Concert/Party at the Avec Night Club in Huntington Beach. Unlike last time, I won’t miss this one and neither should you! Luckily for us newbs and the uninitiated, some key figures of the new wave scene graciously agreed to sit down with me and answer some questions about the Asian/Vietnamese new wave scene for Eric’s Blog.

Eric’s Blog: First of all, thank you so much for agreeing to be interviewed by Eric’s Blog. To start, would you mind introducing yourself and perhaps saying a bit about where you’re from, where you grew up and all that? Also, if you’d like to mention what you do for a living, engage in a little self-promotion, then here’s your chance.

Ian Nguyen: This is Ian Nguyen, the founder of Keep On Music and the DJ for the Reunion Party on 3/27. I came to California in November of 1980 from Houston, Texas, just in time for a fun decade . I’ve been living here since. Besides mixing music, backpacking and skiing, I work in the advertising field as a creative director. My past clients include Toyota, State Farm, AT&T, DIRECTV, etc…

Sean Nguyen: My name is Sean Nguyen and I am from Westminster, California. I was born in Saigon, Vietnam but pretty much grew up in Southern California. I have two careers, the Clark Kent one which is an insurance broker (this one pays the bills) and the other, the Superman one, which is an owner of a synthpop/electro-pop record company in the ‘90s called Strangers Thoughts Records.

Lucy Tran: Hi! my name is Lucy Tran. I’m from Orange County. Grew up in Santa Ana most of my life. Worked in the heart of Little Saigon as a Medical Assistant/Medical Records Dept. at a little popular place called Magnolia Surgery Center. Been there for 21 years now. Practically grew up there also and consider everyone there as my second family. Doctors and staff there are great. They put up with me through all these years. What can I say? I love you guys, even with all  the headaches you cause me!! …and my sister, Cecilia Tran, who pretty much was the one who turned my life around and got me into the medical field.

Jim Nguyen: My name is Jim “Linh” Nguyen. I was born and raised in Los Angeles, California. I moved back to LA mid-2008. Prior to that, I was residing in Palo Alto – right next to “Mat Sach”/Facebook headquarters — for a couple of years. I miss my second home and friends that were my family up there! You guys know who you are!  I want to especially thank Chi/Big sister Jade Luu. She let me stay with her and her family for a couple of weeks until I got my own place and got settled in the “Yay’er!” area. Heart you guys!

I have my hands tied up pretty full now. I’m launching a new startup called JimNetics as their CEO (Chief Entertaining Official) with my business partner Jeffer Fifi Pham: tattoo artist and CIO (Chief Integral OG) for JimNetics, along with directing and managing our other main branch: Tattoos By JimNetics. JimNetics originally started out as an idea and a site, my Christmas gift to myself that I can share with the world. It’s an internet site that currently has content about inspirational, philanthropic/humanitarian, art, tattoos, humor/comedy, current events, feng shui and a little Buddha Head influence to boot. We have a few major exciting things that will be additions to the JimNetics family, JimNetics Urban Wear, JimNetics MotoSports (co-directed by my brother Johnny aka “Happy” from San Fernando Valley Branch Ruff Ryders Bike Crew), JimNetics TAG (Talent Acquisition Group — co-directed by Sr. HR corporate recruiting and staffing specialist Leilani and staffed with consultants Amy Quach and Mae Barlis). We will have hand made custom jewelry by designer Nikki “Mai” Quach, who’s on board and has a home on JimNetics, and then we have Thao Ho, whom I found on Twitter as @Thaozilla (she’s friggin’ hilarious). She will have a home on JimNetics as a resident comedy humor relief specialist. Lastly, Fresh Styles, by JimNetics Hair will be directed and managed by cousin Mike Huynh, aka “Smokey like Chris Tucker Smoke Dogg from Friday,” and JimNetics AAA Medical Billing Services for doctors and their offices, family operated based out in Houston.

EB: How and when did you first become exposed to the music we lovingly refer to as new wave?

IN: Believe it or not, before I got addicted to new wave music, I was a heavy metal head banger, playing drums lol. The first few new wave songs that I heard were “Words” from F.R. David, Rational Youth‘s “Saturday in Silesia,” and of course, “Hey Hey Guy” from Ken Laszlo. I got hooked since, so I decided to give up my drumsticks for a pair of turntables and a mixer.

SN: I actually started listening to new wave as a whole back in 1979/80 with the pioneer bands such as Depeche Mode, OMD, Devo, The Buggles, Blondie, etc. and have actually never stopped. My first exposure to Asian New Wave is “Love in Your Eyes” by Gazebo and “Only You” by Savage. I fell in love with both songs and started collecting everything I could get my hands on.

LT:  I was thirteen and in 8th grade at Carr Intermediate. I was inspired by hanging out with a group of freshman boys from Valley High who would later be known as Santa Ana Boys. I would later attend college, house parties and even clubs at the age of fourteen. Back in the day, parties were made at University halls: UCI, Cal Poly, Long Beach and Cal State Fullerton. The roller skating rink was hot also.

JM: I got exposed to new wave when I was a little kid, when my uncles migrated over to the states from Vietnam.  There were seven of them, my mom’s brothers, all of whom were musical and instrumental — meaning they actually played and put together a garage rock band (only in the family though) and I was influenced listening to classics such as Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Scorpions, Tesla, Guns’N Roses, Metallica, White Snake and Def Leppard.

One or two of the uncles listened to other genres such as our beloved ’80s new wave music. I secretly would listen to their songs and albums because I was such a disciplined kid and didn’t want my parents to think these two uncles I am referring about were influencing me in a negative manner because some of them really lived playboy life styles! Regardless, I kept listening to classics such as Modern Talking, CC Catch and Joy.

Jeffer FiFi Pham my best friend from high school influenced me further with the new ’80s alternative music from New Order,Pet Shop Boys and Bad Boys Blue. Of course Johnny O, Stevie B, Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam, Boy George, The Cure, OMD, Gina T and Sandra, WHAM! and George Michael were major classics I picked up on my own. Over the years I got busy with the normal hustle and bustle of life — the corporate work lifestyle — and stopped listening to them all together. I recently picked up on mainstream widely — today’s electronic dance musicians, especially trance, have big time favorites, artists such as Tiësto, Ferry Corsten, Above and Beyond (Chi/Big Sister Jade Luu influenced), Deadmau5 and Kristina Sky, to name the few of many.

EB: If you would, tell me a little about the club and party scene back in the new wave heyday as you experienced it.

JN: LOL, I never went to one since I was a little kid locked up secretly listening to ’80s new wave while the OG’s of the time, like Big brother Ian and Big sister/notorious, Luscious LOL Lucy where partying hardy. I didn’t even know how it was like or even fathom how it could have been, but seeing photos of them and hearing about their past stories sure does bring a lot of smiles.

SN: I was a teenager in the ‘80s so I didn’t get to hit all of the clubs, but I went to many house parties which were mostly a bunch of people getting together and sticking in a new wave tape or two. If we were really lucky, a person that owned two Technics record players and a mixer would come over and spin their records. Regardless, everyone just loved the music so they really didn’t care whether or not it was mixed well. I remember hearing some really bad mixes but the songs were so great, you really wouldn’t care. There were a few clubs that I remember I managed to make it to including The World in Beverly Center and Florentine Gardens. The rest is a blur, but I know I got around to a few others that were really fun. It was the ‘80s, everything was fun.

 LT: Back in the day, clubs were easy to get into. We had fake IDs that were available through the check cashing places. All it took was the guys to either know security or pay them to let us in. We used to buy one ticket, open the back door and a bunch of us would run in. Boy, those were the good ol’ days.

IN: What can I say? The party scene back then was just fun – despite occasional troubles here and there. What do you expect? We were teenagers. New wave music was booming among the Asian youths; there were many college parties organized by Vietnamese Clubs from UCI, Cal State Fullerton, etc. But the most fun were the house parties (mostly held in someone’s garage with cheap disco lights from Radio Shack and home stereo speakers.   We just could not get enough of new wave parties; sometimes we even drove to San Jose for a school party. New wave music was heard at every coffee shop and in every car in Orange County.

EB: Although I’ve occasionally heard of new wave being more broadly referred to as “Asian New Wave,” the core audience seems to be heavily Vietnamese and I’ve more often heard it referred to as “Vietnamese New Wave.“ It even seems that most of the cover artists, with the exception of Cally Kwong, are Vietnamese singers (e.g. Anh Thu, Bac Dzinh, Cao Lam, Đặng Thế Luẫn, Đon Hồ, Giana Nguyen, Le Anh Quan, Lien Khuc, Lynda Trang Dai, Ngoc-thu Thi Nguyen, Nguyen Thanh, Phuong Nguyen, Thu thuy, Tommy Ngo, Trizzie Phuong Trinh, Vina Uyen My, etc). What do you make of that?

LT: Trizzie was a friend of ours. I knew Linda Trang Dai before she was known. She dated my brother when she was a senior and working at South Coast Plaza. Both they and all these singers were inspired by the one band who brought new wave music to the stage in concert. That band was known and is still very popular today, as THE UPTIGHT band, whose live music and perfect English and knowledge of new wave music brought us new wave concerts we would never forget. They are our memory of the best party in the ‘80s era.

IN: I think new wave music was also really popular among the Chinese and Korean audiences in LA areas at the time (Most of the record shops that carried new wave records were in LA). As I remember, when it was later introduced to the Vietnamese audiences, it became more popular than ever, especially with the Vietnamese Night Clubs. Bands and artists such as The Uptight and Lynda Trang Dai were among the first who did cover songs. Up ’til today, Vietnamese singers are still doing new wave covers for popular concerts such as Paris by Night etc…

SN: The Vietnamese crowd heavily embraced this music. As regular new wave became a lifestyle for many people in the ‘80s, Asian New Wave became a lifestyle for many Vietnamese. We walked, talked, and acted new wave. From the hairdos to the style of dress, a lot of people were just in love this kind of music. This, of course, was also very contagious to the Vietnamese record companies and young Vietnamese singers at the time who also liked this music and saw it as something that would be great to record and sell. Other new wave singers during that time would included Thanh Mai, Tuyet Nhung, Thuy Vi, Giang Ngoc, Trung Hanh and Lilian.

JN: From what I remember I didn’t really listen to Vietnamese new wave artists because I always preferred the original Euro, Italo and American artists / groups. I did listen a few times to Lynda Trang Dai and Tommy Ngo back when then they were married along with some Đon Hồ and some Trizzie when I’d go shopping with my parents back in Chinatown and Phuc Loc Tho (Asian Garden Mall). I was like, it’s cool and everything how they are doing major cover songs paying “homage” to the OGs of Euro / Italo Americana, what us Asians more widely accepted by the Vietnamese younger youth as new wave Music. It was cool, but not what I stuck with. I got major love and respect for the famous popular Vietnamese Ca Si / Singers making the effort and attempt because they did make history in the making by helping spread new wave to the main stream.

EB: What was the impetus for the first Keep on Music New Wave + ‘80s Reunion? Were you pleased with how it went down?

IN: After twenty plus years, I finally saw one of my old friends, Phuong Mercedes, again. During one of the get togethers, she showed me the photo albums she kept all these years that contained many pictures of our new wave era. I also got to see other long lost friends such as Lucy (who is the true ‘80s Queen). At the same time, I had the opportunity to be the guest DJ for Limelight’s new wave night at the Shark Club. I also met many new wave fans there. Knowing that new wave and ‘80s music had made a comeback, we decided to have a small reunion for old friends. That was when the idea of “Keep On Music, A New Wave & 80′s Costume Reunion Party” came about. Word spread around fast among friends, so a big turnout showed up for the reunion party. The result was fantastic; we had a full house that night. Many came who had not partied for more than twenty years; there were even friends who flew in from other states and cities. At the beginning, this was supposed to be a one time event, but due to popular demand, Keep On Music on Facebook was born and a second reunion will take place on 3/27.

SN: The people who had grown up with this kind of music have reached a point in their lives where they want to relive some of their brilliant pasts. As mentioned, Asian New Wave was more than just music; it was a way of life.

LT: The first ‘80s reunion was just a gig to get people to a lounge to hear the new wave music. Good advertising and word of mouth ended up with an overwhelming number of RSVPs so it had to be moved to a larger venue. That event turned out very fun and memorable. A lot of people we knew from high school came out. People who would never have had come out on a normal basis were there. Friends from out of state came. People from cities as far as San Jose, San Fran, Vegas and San Diego came. The party was a great turn out. Enemies of the past became friends of the present. Friends that were present were friends from the past. This second one will be even better, because I, Lucy Tran, will be MCin’. I am the symbol of the ‘80s….haha..JK…

JN: I wasn’t there for the first reunion back in November last year. I didn’t know brother Ian back then either. While they had this going on, at the time I was having two major surgeries to remove both left and right thyroid glands and was even more home-ridden. I didn’t go out for an entire year because of these medical issues that I was going through. As of recent times, after all the surgeries and radiation treatments I started to become more active online and accidentally got on the Keep On Music Facebook fan page. I checked it out, briefly skimming, saw some old songs that I remembered liking and was thrown back in time. I don’t remember much of my childhood but once I started listening to all these old songs I remembered pretty much everything I did at that very moment as a kid… And that to me, it’s amazing, especially how I’m still recovering slowly and surely but with this music and the reaction from Keep On Music, it’s actually been very therapeutic and heartfelt — especially with all the new friends I met, including mainly brother Ian, who is just bomb with his mad DJ skills and professional sense of direction as a creative director and sister Lucy who is just so funny and lovely, she has major yolks (jokes). =o) From photos that I saw from the first event and from another good friend brother Tom Nguyen of Just One Pack. (He’s currently traveling around the world and last I checked he was just out of Chile before the earthquakes hit. By the way, my condolences to the victims of both the Chile and Haiti disasters.) This is his travel blog and he shares his pretty awesome adventures.

EB: Are you surprised at how long-lasting the love for the music has been? Have you seen a lot of younger people keeping the new wave flame alive?

IN: Personally, I don’t think new wave music was ever gone. After the ‘80s, I did move on to DJing other music genres such as trance, house and techno – but new wave music has been with me all these years. I think new wave music is embedded deep in our blood. And yes, new wave and ‘80s is back, but this time around it is much more meaningful to me and others because it reminds us of our youth and good memories; everyone who lived through the ‘80s would feel the same way as I do. What surprised me the most is to see the younger audiences also sharing the same love for new wave music. Jim Nguyen, our PR person for KOM and DJ Alpha from Limelight are the two best examples. Both of them are in the early thirties, too young to know what the ‘80s was about.  But both share the same experience, they were introduced to new wave music by their uncles and developed the taste for this wonderful music genre.

SN: I am not surprised because this music is very special and will withstand the test of time. From the beautiful vocals to the mesmerizing synths, if you lived through this period, it will always be a part of you. Today’s music seems so controlled and the creativity and personality of the bands and songs just get lost in the shuffle. I honestly have not met anyone from the younger generation that I feel will keep the flame alive. Even the DJs that are spinning new wave today seem to lack the feel for the music. I mean, they are playing the songs, but I don’t feel the passion and love for the music. It makes all the difference in the world.

LT: The new wave music will never die out. The ‘80s were the best era. It brings back so many memories of high school. We have so many stories to share – so many memories to make us still young at heart. The young people today may know the new wave music because of maybe their parents or maybe just hearing it at Sharks. But the only thing they lack from it is to have actually lived that era, where fun and house parties were safe. Today, no house party is safe. No fights are with fists. No group has a name that would be known… no hangout joints to meet at. Ours was Mission Control. And only I have that picture of it. Did you see it on our K.O.M. site? That picture is priceless!

JN: I was totally shocked honestly when I jumped on the Keep On Music Facebook fan page. I was like wtheo? Is this pho realz? I saw lots of people commenting and knowing me, since I’ve been living under a rock within the past year I forced myself to become social again and started commenting after some of my old time favorites. After commenting I began to know and associate myself with brother Ian and sister Lucy. I am still somewhat ill, not recovered 100% to full time physical health, but even prior KOM, my spirits have been lifted in the past three months.

After this recent visit to the family for Tet, one my good ol’ trance / club- hoppin’ / back-in-the-day best friend, chieu choi Vivacious Cyndie Vu and one of her youngest kids accompanied me to Orange County to surprise the KOM crew and affiliates. Boy, it was cool and awesome how the shoot was done, very nice and cool studio that looked very modern and hip with editing rooms and in the back, a green screen where I just walked to in the middle of their shoot where I took pictures and recorded some pre footage of the entire experience while I was there, including seeing all of Lucy’s old toys and memorabilia that her father still kept in storage. She busted out a Bob’s Big Boy like squeeze dude, ET phone home Aladdin lunch box, Smurfette lunch tray and of course our fearless leader and director, Gizmo from Gremlins.

please like, share, and comment on this post! The Vietnamese New Wave Revival

Who are the “Công Binh” and the “Lính Thợ”? Here in this post, director Lam Lê talks about his most recent documentary that reveals and retells the elided history of these Vietnamese Indochinese workers conscripted to war-time labor in France during World War II. Where French history has erased and forgotten them, Lam Lê writes these men back into history and memory with his Công Binh: La longue nuit Indochinoise.

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French Trailer of Công Binh

Summary

On the eve of the Second World War, twenty thousand Vietnamese people were forcibly recruited in French Indochina and shipped to France to work in weapons factories, replacing workers sent to the front. Mistaken for soldiers, they were stuck in France after the defeat in 1940. During the Occupation, these workers – called “Công Binh” – were left at the mercy of the Wehrmacht and lived like pariahs. They pioneered rice cultivation in the Camargue. Wrongly accused of betraying their native Việt Nam, they were all actually strongly committed to Hồ Chí Minh, rooting for the Independence in 1945.

The film interviews roughly two dozen survivors, both in Việt Nam and in France. Five died during the editing of the movie. They talk of their day to day life in a colonial situation. The film portrays a page of the history between France and Việt Nam that has shamefully been erased from our collective memory.

Quotes by the Công Binh 

On the working and living conditions in the camps: 

“We were given capes. We looked like chickens with broken wings. The shoes were too big for us. We were pathetic when we walked. We looked like a row of penguins.“

“We had no mosquito nets. We had nothing to eat, however, we were a feast for the mosquitoes! But we planted the rice, our feet in the water. And when I ate a bowl of this rice, the rice we harvested, what joy. It was the first bowl of rice ‘made in France’ I ate since arriving on French soil.”

On why they had never told their story before

“What use to stir up the past? I wanted to first ensure a good future for Juliette, my wife, for my family in this country,” said Nguyên Van Thanh, alias ZAN 3, who stayed on in France after the war.

“I would never have thought someone would be interested in this story. Especially in France! After all, it is not very glorious for the Republic of Human Rights, it would be like self inflicting a whipping, right? But I realized that it was important to pass this memory on to our children.“ said Nguyên Van Thanh.

Interview with director Lam Lê

Could you explain the title “Công Binh”?

“Công Binh,” in Vietnamese literally means: worker-soldier. This is the exact name to be given to the 20,000 Vietnamese conscripted to go to work in factories in France during the Second World War. I insist on the use of this word because the misunderstanding about their situation is due to the fact that these men were wrongly “named.” In Việt Nam, they were known as “Lính Thợ,” etymologically: soldier-worker. It is a very pejorative term that implies “collaborators of the French Army.” I, like many Vietnamese for a long time, had a very distorted and false image of the Lính Thợ, believing them to be traitors to their native country, or that they had consorted with the French. These unfortunates were clearly forgotten by French history, but also by Vietnamese history that had always considered them traitors, while France had stolen their youth…. They were conscripted in the countryside. Often, they did not know how to read, they did not know what to expect. Families were forced to give up at least one son. My father, luckily, was not enlisted. We lived in the city, he was able to escape through the cracks.

How did you become interested in the history of these men?

I met one of them. Total coincidence. In the early 1980s, I had a difficult time finding an elderly Vietnamese refugee in France to play the role of a resistance fighter in my previous films Rencontres des nuages et du dragon (1980) and Poussière d’Empire (1983). Surprisingly enough, I found an old man who did not mind playing the role. He had settled in France just after the Second World War, and was very secretive about his past. He told me much later that he had been a Lính Thợ. In fact, he was ashamed and was embarrassed that I knew. He knew what the word implied in Việt Nam. Such a shame considering he was a hero to his fellow Công Bình, a staunch supporter of Hồ Chí Minh! When I heard about the book written by the journalist Pierre Daum on the subject (Actes Sud in 2009), I immediately contacted him. He had used a master’s thesis written by a French-Vietnamese student on the subject in the 1990s and delved further in his research. It triggered something. I knew it was time for me to tackle this film. I am not a journalist, nor a historian. I am a director: I wanted to tell this story, but with my Vietnamese subjectivity and vision. Brandishing this identity I wanted to bring my viewpoint, as a Vietnamese, to this story. Ultimately, Công Binh, la longue nuit indochinoise is not just another documentary, but a movie like all my other fiction films. It is one of my most intimate films.

Do you talk about yourself in it?

In a way. These men were twenty years old when they left Việt Nam, oftentimes saying they would never again see their country. At the same age, I too left Saigon, then under U.S. domination in the late 1960s, that is to say, without hope of return. The Communist victory over the entire country was inevitable. I know, in my gut, what it means to be exiled. Like them, I have nothing of my past, no class pictures, no school books, nothing of my Vietnamese childhood. We are Memory’s uprooted. What is at stake here is transmission. I love this quote Pasolini used as an epigraph for his film: “History is the passion of sons seeking to interview their fathers.” As for the men in my film, nobody had interviewed them. They have always hidden their tragic story from their children because what mattered was the future, not the past. I have hours and hours of filmed interviews with these men. They opened up to me utterly. We developed a very strong relationship built on trust, a father-son relationship. They quickly realized they needed to pass along this memory. They are all nonagenarians. I also discovered that I felt invested with this mission. For me, this film is the legacy that I did not receive from my own father whom I left at eighteen, the legacy I want to leave to my son born in France, I who do not have any memories to transmit, no pictures, no family albums.

These men are the last survivors of this past. Their words needed to be collected urgently…

During the editing, five of my witnesses died. So, yes, I felt like I was running against the clock. I have already shown the film to the Công Binh still valid who live in France. This past fall, I organized a special preview showing during a commemorative day in Sorgues, where at the time, there were 5,000 Công Binh living in several camps, with a prison exclusively for the Indochinese. It was important for me to show this film to them, to their children and grandchildren who came from all corners of France. I will also go to Việt Nam as soon as possible to show the film to those I met there.

Since Poussière d’Empire, it seems that you have been grappling with colonial issues.

I was born in 1948 in North Việt Nam. I belong to a generation that experienced colonization directly, a generation of Indochinese “natives.” As a child, I remember being slapped by a colonist child in the street, just like the story told by one of the Công Binh in the film. It was common at the time. In Hà Nội, where I grew up, we did not have the right to go into colonists’ neighborhoods. At the swimming pool, there were segregated time periods. My parents wanted us, the children, to succeed. The only solution was to work hard and pass a competitive examination in kindergarten to earn admission to the “French” school. And then, to stay among the top of the class in hopes of obtaining a passport to study in universities abroad. Our only hope was France, the country that enslaved us. A cruel paradox. I followed the same path as my two elder brothers. One graduated from Ecole Polytechnique and the other Centrale [two of France's most selective universities]; both required attending preparatory classes for the Grandes Ecoles…. and yet, in our heads, we continued to feel inferior. You remain colonized in your head. In Việt Nam, to say you are going abroad, you said “đi xứ người,” literally “go to the land of men”. Can you imagine that? That means we, the Vietnamese, considered ourselves less than human. We were taught that we were not full citizens, merely natives.

How do you explain that Algerian remembrance is much more “vindicated” with an abundance of books, memoria, and movies. Compared to Algeria, former Indochina seems to have been erased, forgotten.

The Algerian and Indochinese problems are cousins. It should not be forgotten that is was after Điện Biên Phủ that the French colonial empire crumbled and that the Algerian separatist leaders were trained by the Indochinese guerrillas! Of course, Algeria was closer. Indochina was so far away. And then there is also perhaps a cultural factor. Vietnamese mentality, eager for modernity, tends to erase the past. It is a country focused on the future. Many young people I interviewed there do not know for example that France had once colonized the country. I do not know if this is good or bad. As for second-generation Vietnamese immigrants who have settled in the West, their parents were not interested in claims and demands. They chose invisibility, they were desperate to fit in, to be discreet, to erase the past. This was the case for the Công Binh, who never demanded to be paid for their years of quasi-free, hard work, who never spoke of their inglorious past to their children, and whose history is only recognized now, over sixty years later…. It was high time, especially for their children, to learn of this past, to reclaim this memory.

Do you think that France is struggling to cope with its colonial past?

Yes, of course. There are actually very few films on France’s real colonial past. It remains a taboo. When compared with the enormous amount of American movies on the war in Việt Nam, it’s true that there is a problem.

When my film Poussière d’Empire was released in 1983, it was one of the very evocations of colonial Indochina from the point of view of the colonized. And the fact that I killed off Dominique Sanda, the French star of the production, in the middle of the film was quite shocking. For me, it was logical in terms of the historical truth of France in Indochina. After France’s defeat at Điện Biên Phủ (symbolized by the death of Dominique Sanda) at exactly the halfway mark of the film, it was the colonized’s turn to take up their history. I realized I had touched a nerve by metaphorically killing the French Empire. Over the past thirty years, the situation has certainly changed, but not so much in the end. The former president of the French Republic still requested the benefits of colonization be taught in schools.

Isn’t that placing certain cultures higher than others? This shows that nothing has been resolved.

All trailers and images are copyrighted by ADR Productions, 2012.

—

Lam Lê was born in 1950 in Vietnam and came to France in 1970 to pursue his university degree in mathematics in France’s most elite and competitive institutions. He later studied painting at the Beaux Arts in Paris. He started his professional career as a theater set designer at the Atelier de l’Epée de Bois, which he co-founded at the Cartoucherie de Vincennes. Lâm Lê moved on to cinema, first as an assistant on features with directors such as Jean-Pierre Mocky. He made a name for himself with his storyboard for Garde A Vue (Claude Miller). He has worked with a number of directors, such as Jacques Perrin on Microcosmos.

He has written and directed a number of films; but his first was a mid-length feature that he wrote and directed in 1980. Rencontre Des Nuages Du Dragon (mid-length feature selected for the Cannes Festival in 1981) would be the first work in his Indochinese trilogy. He followed it up with the full length feature, Poussière D’empire, starring Dominique Sanda and Jean-François Stévenin (selected for Venice in 1983 and Berlin in 1984). This poetic movie is the first French feature authorized in Vietnam and opened the doors for other French films on Indochina. In 2005, he directed, 20 Nuits et Un Jour de Pluie, the last film of his trilogy.

His latest effort, Công Binh : La longue nuit Indochinoise, is his first documentary and signals his return to Vietnamese subjects.

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please like, share, and comment on this post! Công Binh: The Forgotten Indochinese Workers in France

It’s that time again! The San Francisco Global Vietnamese Film Festival is having their second biennial film and video showcase featuring Vietnamese filmmakers in Viet Nam and the diaspora. diaCRITICS managing editor and DVAN intern, Estela Uribe, had the pleasure of sitting down with Isabelle Pelaud, Executive Director of DVAN, and Julie Thi Underhill, diaCRITICS managing director and San Francisco Global Vietnamese Film Festival director to share with us their vision and inspiration behind the festival, the types of stories coming out of the festival, and which films they are excited about showing. A general introduction to the festival, below, is followed by the interview then the complete program. The San Francisco Global Vietnamese Film Festival is the latest commitment of the Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network, the arts organization that hosts diaCRITICS.

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The debut San Francisco Diasporic Vietnamese Film Festival, as some of you might remember, took place on April 23, 2011, at San Francisco State University’s Coppola Theater. With a slightly changed name, this year’s San Francisco Global Vietnamese Film Festival occurs on April 27-28^th at the historic Roxie Theater (3117 16th Street, San Francisco Mission District) located in the Mission district of San Francisco.

This 2-day film festival will launch with an Opening Night Gala ($10, 7:30-10pm, April 26) at Artists’ Television Access (992 Valencia St, San Francisco Mission District), including food, drink, mingling/mixing, music, and short poetry readings by Bay Area poets Việt Lê (also a filmmaker featured in the festival), Genny Lim, Bonnie Kwong, Paul Ocampo, and Tracy Nguyen—an exciting line-up of innovative and powerful Bay Area writers.

The San Francisco Global Vietnamese Film Festival at the Roxie Theater expects over 2,000 attendees, watching over 20 films from many countries, including Việt Nam, Cambodia, Japan, Canada, France, Czech Republic, and the United States. The festival will feature narrative, documentary, and experimental films and videos by filmmakers such as Cuong Ngo (Pearls of the Far East), Hong-An Truong (Adaptation Fever series), Nguyễn Trinh Thi (a retrospective), Phương Thảo Trần and Swann Dubus (With Or Without Me). A director’s Q&A on Saturday night includes Việt Lê, Duc Nguyen, and Tony Nguyen, whose films are all showing at the festival, with their introduction. Trần Anh Hùng’s Norwegian Wood is the Opening Night feature. Each screening is $10, which may include multiple films or events. To view the program please visit the festival’s website, and for tickets visit the festival’s EventBrite page.

The following interview was conducted by DVAN intern and diaCRITICS managing editor Estela Uribe, with Julie Thi Underhill and Isabelle Thuy Pelaud, the director and supervisor of the festival, answering questions.

What is the vision for the San Francisco Global Vietnamese Film Festival?

There is an incredible amount of quality film and video being made by Vietnamese people around the world, and since the Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network is international in scope, the festival is one of our best ways to bring the works of the global Vietnamese community to the Bay Area. Although southern California has the Vietnamese International Film Festival, northern California had nothing to the effect, until our festival premiered in 2011. After our first festival at the Coppola Theater at SFSU, the audience literally refused to leave. The first question after the last screening, as the audience sat there in their seats not leaving the theater, was “When will this happen again?” So it was clear to us then, after a packed theater throughout the day, that there is an audience demand for Vietnamese film and video in the Bay Area. We decided to organize the festival on a biennial basis, and alternate with DVAN’s literary festival, to give our staff a rest in the off years for each program. This year we increased the film festival from one day to two, to allow for more extensive programming, and we moved the festival to a more centrally-located theater, the Roxie in the Mission, which is close to the 16th and Mission BART station for easier access through public transportation. And this year, unlike in 2011, we’re having a kick-off party at the Opening Night Gala at Artists’ Television Access, to give everyone a chance to get together and connect or reconnect, to eat, drink, and celebrate another great program of films. Our mission is generally to increase exposure to Vietnamese filmmakers wherever they live, supporting work of all genres and subjects, and to sustain a Bay Area audience that is interested in these kinds of films. Yet we want to have fun in the process, and we do, even as the festival requires a tremendous amount of work.

Why is it the San Francisco “Global” Vietnamese Film Festival and not the “International”?

There is another festival in Southern California called the Vietnamese International Film Festival, which we mentioned before. ViFF offers support and advice to DVAN and has recommended films to us. We are indebted to them in a variety of ways. At the beginning, ViFF requested that we not use “international” so there is no confusion between our two film festivals. So we decided first to use “diasporic” in 2011, and then to use “global” from here on out, since “global” includes the diaspora across the globe and the communities in Việt Nam. The word “global” is also more inclusive than our previous word “diasporic,” which was perceived by some as being too academic, since not everyone understands that “diaspora” means “dispersed.”

Any figures on the numbers of Vietnamese in the diaspora?

There are about 3 million people of Vietnamese descent living in the diaspora. In contrast, there are about 89 million people living in Việt Nam today, comprising over 50 ethnic groups.

Which countries are Vietnamese concentrated in, and which American cities/areas?

The Vietnamese are spread out across the globe, mostly in the U.S., Cambodia, France, Laos Australia, and Canada. According to the 2010 census, there are approximately 1.8 million Vietnamese in the U.S., concentrated in cities like San Jose, Garden Grove, Westminster, Houston, San Diego, and other locations with over 10,000 Vietnamese Americans.  Actually, Santa Clara County in the south Bay Area has over 125,000 Vietnamese. We anticipate that our audience will come from the surrounding areas including San Jose to attend our festival, since there is nothing else like it in Northern California and since their chances for seeing Vietnamese films on the big screen in Northern California are otherwise very tiny.

Are the war and refugee experiences still a predominant concern for the filmmakers and audiences?

Yes, but at the same time no, because our films are not limited to that topic. A lot of the time when people address Việt Nam in this country, they normally refer to the American war in Việt Nam. The words “Việt Nam” are almost synonymous for the war in this country, even as many of us agree that “Việt Nam is country not a war,” as the saying goes. Although the memories of war are still evident in communities affected by war, war is not the only thing on our minds, nor should it be. We express our connection to war or our disconnect from war, on our own terms. This means that our filmmakers have enlarged the conversation about war in significant ways.

As for films that address war in some capacity, we are screening five films that expand previous conversations about war as part of the history and memory of Việt Nam. Hong-An Truong’s Adaptation Fever series is an experimental video installation trilogy that investigates difference in relation to time, history, and memory through overdubbed narration in Vietnamese and French, and with some English subtitles. Hong-An Truong, a Vietnamese-American filmmaker, constructed each film using found footage of Việt Nam from during its French Indochina period. Her films are very compelling and haunting, even as they have elements of elusiveness and evasiveness, especially linguistically. These powerful short films left our programming committee in discussion for quite some time. We also saw one of them last October at the Troubling Borders exhibit of Southeast Asian Women in the Diaspora at the Sweeney Gallery at UC Riverside, and found it lingering on our minds for days.

There’s also Tony Nguyen’s Enforcing the Silence, a documentary that investigates the 1981 murder of Lam Duong, who founded the Vietnamese Youth Development Center. The center is still there today, in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco. In his investigative documentary, Tony Nguyen contemplates how tensions during the war spilled over onto U.S. soil, with five murders of Vietnamese-American journalists in the 1980s and 1990s. Lam’s life and death within this context is part of a history we don’t ever hear anything about, even within Asian American studies, a field that really got its start in the Bay Area. So we see this filmmaker expanding, in remarkable ways, the conversation about the ongoing effects of war on the Vietnamese-American community, in San Francisco and beyond. Although the American war officially ended in 1973 and the North Vietnamese took over the South in 1975, we still have a lot of political tension and strife in our diasporic communities. This film allows us to understand those tensions better, perhaps so that we can move beyond them, even as the film also hopes to help solve the mystery behind Lam’s murder.

And then there’s Duc Nguyen whose newest documentary, Stateless, centers stranded Vietnamese refugees in the Philippines after the closing of refugee camps left these refugees without legal status, barely surviving on their own with no place to call home. This film is very interesting to us and we expect it will attract a solid audience. We like and admire Duc Nguyen’s previous documentary Bolinao 52, about Vietnamese boat people whose stories are harrowing—stranded in the South China Sea on a damaged boat for so long, weeks, some were forced into cannibalism to stay alive. As with Bolinao 52, Duc Nguyen’s newest film also tells a hidden history of evacuations gone wrong, which few people know about. It especially complicates the tidy narrative of rescue by a benevolent asylum country that often characterizes the refugee flight from Việt Nam. Showing a sneak preview of Stateless is an honor for us, plus to have Duc Nguyen in person for a director’s introduction and for the Q&A on Saturday.

And a pioneer of Việt Nam’s independent cinema, Nguyễn Trinh Thi, made Chronicle of a Tape Recorded Over using an exquisite corpse method—first used by dadaists in the 1920s—as the filmmaker journeys over the American War’s notorious Hồ Chí Minh Trail asking her subjects to contribute to an assemblage film. And her Song to the Front takes a historical but rarely seen classic Vietnamese war film from 1973 as its central source, turning it into a small vignette that decomposes the aesthetic and romantic elements. Like Hong-An Truong, Nguyễn Trinh Thi is revisiting the archive and fashioning new conversations and interrogations from what she’s found there.

What are other stories coming out of the Global Vietnamese community, which you are highlighting?

The Vietnamese in Việt Nam and in the diaspora have developed new terminologies and engagements with their identities and with the world, even as we see parallels between our experiences and other people’s. So even the perspective of Vietnamese-Americans can be very transnational. Here’s a great example. Lin+Lam’s 2004 video essay Departure discusses modernization and foreign interventions through transportation methods. Made by two Vietnamese-American collaborators, whose short film Unidentified Vietnam No. 18 we screened in 2011, Departure is told in five different native languages by five women who recount interconnected histories of urban environments that have undergone transformation—Taipei, Shanghai, and Hanoi—all former colonial cities.

Our festival also shows films that center often-marginalized themes like queer desire, love, family, and/or kinship—in Việt Lê’s Love Bang!, Nguyễn Đình Anh’s Uncle & Son, and Leon Le’s Dawn—and the sexual awakening in teens in On Duty with Shu Qi from the Best of Yxine Film Festival, and heroin addiction and HIV illness in northwest Việt Nam, in With or Without Me. Four of those five films were shot in Southeast Asia—in Cambodia and in Việt Nam. And some films we’re screening are very much a hybrid and transnational creation between artists of many countries and identities, including our Opening Night feature, Trần Anh Hùng’s adaptation of Haruki Murakami’s Norwegian Wood. This movie was filmed by a Vietnamese-French director on location in Japan, home of the story’s author, then set to a score composed by Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood, who is British. Which brings us back to music, something Murakami works into all his novels, this one no exception. Jonny Greenwood is British like the Beatles, whose song lends the title of novel and film. It’s interesting, all the connections and collaborations, crisscrossing the globe.  Norwegian Wood is a deeply affecting story of mourning and love set within the social upheavals in late 1960’s Tokyo, and a real treat for fans of either Trần Anh Hùng or Haruki Murakami.

Can you spotlight some screenings that you’re really excited about?

It’s really hard to choose among them, because the whole program is very solid. We are definitely excited to be showing Norwegian Wood, by one of the most respected and best-known filmmakers of Vietnamese descent. Some of Trần Anh Hùng’s movies that might already be familiar to our audience are Scent of Green Papaya, Cyclo, and Vertical Ray of the Sun. Haruki Murakami is a globally known author, wildly popular, who refused  to allow anyone to adapt his book until Trần Anh Hùng approached him.

Another film of particular interest is Enforcing the Silence by Tony Nguyen, which we talked about earlier. diaCRITICS editor Viet Nguyen reviewed it in 2011. The film speculates upon journalist Lam Duong’s murder in 1981 in San Francisco, after he reprinted articles from newspapers in postwar Việt Nam, then under Communist control. This film is essential viewing in San Francisco in particular, because it illuminates an important history for the local Vietnamese community. Tony Nguyen along with Việt Lê and Duc Nguyen will be doing a Q&A on Saturday night, so the audience is in for quite a treat having the directors present to discuss their filmmaking practices and motivations, and their next projects.

First time director Cuong Ngo, a Vietnamese-Canadian, has made a beautiful film with an all-star cast, Pearls of the Far East, about women’s frustrated search for love in Việt Nam. Its actors have starred before in The White Silk Dress, Vertical Ray of the Sun, Moon at the Bottom of the Well, The Clash, The Rebel, and Joy Luck Club. We’re happy to return these talented actors to the big screen in San Francisco—this film has great intergenerational appeal. It’s our first film by a Vietnamese-Canadian, too. And the second generation will be moved and amused by Mark Tran’s All About Dad, which tackles the theme of Vietnamese-American parental conservatism and rigid expectations with originality and humor. It screens as a double feature with Leon Le’s short film Dawn, which won three important awards at the Yxine Film Fest (YxineFF) 2012.

PROGRAM FOR THE SAN FRANCISCO GLOBAL VIETNAMESE FILM FESTIVAL

The San Francisco Global Vietnamese Film Festival (April 26-28, 2013) is a biennial film and video showcase centering Vietnamese filmmakers in Việt Nam and the diaspora—reflecting the transnational nature of Vietnamese people today. The San Francisco Global Vietnamese Film Festival (SFGVFF) is the first and only festival of its kind in the Bay Area. With an Opening Night Gala ($10, 7:30-10pm,  April 26) at Artists’ Television Access (992 Valencia St), the SFGVFF runs from 2:30pm to midnight each day, April 27-28, 2013, at the historic Roxie Theater (3117 16th Street) built in 1909 in the Mission district of San Francisco. The festival expects over 2,000 attendees.

Over 20 films from all over the world—including Việt Nam, Cambodia, Canada, France, Japan, Czech Republic, and the United States—will be showcased at our two-day festival. This year, the SFGVFF features narrative, documentary, and experimental films and videos by Cuong Ngo (Pearls of the Far East), Đỗ Quốc Trung (On Duty With Shu Qi), Duc Nguyen (sneak preview of Stateless), Hong-An Troung (Adaptation Fever series), Leon Le (Dawn), Lin+Lam (Departure), Mark Tran (All About Dad), Nghiêm Quỳnh Trang (Un Interrogatoire), Nguyễn Đình Anh (Uncle & Son), a retrospective by Nguyễn Trinh Thi, Phương Thảo Trần and Swann Debus (With Or Without Me), Tony Nguyen (Enforcing The Silence), Trần Anh Hùng (Norwegian Wood), Trần Dũng Thanh Huy (16-30), Trần Ngọc Sáng (Go Playing With Ice), and Việt Lê (Love Bang!). The festival is pleased to feature introductory talks and Q&A discussion with filmmakers/directors Việt Lê, Duc Nguyen, and Tony Nguyen.

Each screening is $10, and may include multiple films or events. Tickets available at EventBrite.

Our festival is sponsored in part by the Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network, Zellerbach Family Foundation, Walter & Elise Haas Fund, Asian Pacific Islander Cultural Center, and San Francisco Arts Commission.

The San Francisco Global Vietnamese Film Festival is proudly part of the 16th annual United States of Asian America Festival.

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PROGRAM OF EVENTS
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FRIDAY APRIL 26 — ARTISTS TELEVISION ACCESS —
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Opening Night Gala

Doors open                                       7:30 pm
Doors close                                     10:00 pm

The biennial San Francisco Global Vietnamese Film Festival inaugurates, with a party, its 2013 showcase of filmmakers of Vietnamese descent from all over the world. The Opening Night Gala, held at Artists Television Access (992 Valencia Street in the Mission), offers you the chance to mix and mingle with filmmakers, film-lovers, spoken word performers, poets, and visual artists who’ve dropped by to celebrate northern California’s only Vietnamese-focused festival of films. Trailers for excellent films and videos playing over the next two days, at the nearby Roxie Theater, will be screened during the Opening Night Gala. The open mic invites Bay Area wordsmiths (of all persuasions) to read poems and perform spoken word. Music and refreshments (including cognac, chocolates, and entrees) are provided by the festival’s host organization, Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network, whose aim is to promote Vietnamese artists from across the globe, including the generations born in the diaspora. Please drop by to celebrate their launch of the 2013 San Francisco Global Vietnamese Film Festival, because everyone loves a good beginning. The event is $10 but includes food, drink, and merriment, thanks in part to Opening Night Gala sponsors Martell Cognac, Le Colonial, Hodo Soy Beanery, Rau Om, Sugar Bowl Bakery, and 1000 Fine Events.

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SATURDAY APRIL 27 — ROXIE THEATER —
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Hong-An Truong — Adaptation Fever series  |  Lin + Lam — Departure

Doors open                                     2:25 pm
Introduction by Việt Lê                   2:40 pm
Screening begins                          2:45 pm
Screening ends                             4:00 pm

Hong-An Troung’s ADAPTATION FEVER (2006-2007 | US | experimental video installation | 20 min) is a trilogy that both appropriates and disrupts the archive. ‘The Past is a Distant Colony,’ ‘A Story in the Process of Self-Alienation,’ ‘It’s True Because It’s Absurd,’ and ‘Explosions in the Sky’ were each constructed using found footage of Viet Nam during its French Indochina period, to explore questions about the politics of representation and the construction of difference in relation to history, time, and memory. The split screen and juxtaposition become a simple technique whereby the “real” and by extension, its historical referent, are permanently deferred objects, further diminished through the overdubbed narratives in Vietnamese and French which are only briefly summarized in English subtitles. Playing with the idea that nostalgia can be evoked without memory or experience, and also by the co-dependent relationship between the West’s present and the Other’s desire for that present, this video appropriates archival images as a way to consider translation, postcolonial subjectivity, and sentimentality. With an introduction by Việt Lê, curator and director of LOVE BANG! (screening later at 4:30.)

After that, Lin+Lam’s DEPARTURE (2004 | US | video essay | 48 min) considers modernization and foreign intervention, through transportation methods. Shot from the exploratory perspective of moving car, cycle, and trains, the video travels through three former colonial Asian cities: Taipei, Shanghai, and Hanoi. In recognition of language hierarchies and the politics of translation, five women narrate interrelated histories of urban environments under transformation, in their native languages—Mandarin Chinese, Taiwanese, English, Shanghainese, and Vietnamese.

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Việt Lê — Love Bang!  |  Nguyễn Trinh Thi — Retrospective

Doors open                                    4:15 pm
Screening begins                          4:30 pm
Screening ends                             5:45 pm

Việt Lê’s LOVE BANG! (2012 | Cambodia | music video | 5.5 min) is a sexperimental music video exploring the Southeast Asian popular culture scene with a fantastic vision of queer love. Lê’s sensational trilingual hip pop song (Vietnamese, Khmer and English) also reveals contradictions in modernity and memory of Southeast Asia’s fraught history of war and trauma. “Hip pop” is a fictitious cross between pop and hip hop. The disjunctured video features a queer, star-crossed, time-traveling war-time love triangle. Sounds complicated? Love is! Filmed in Cambodia, Lê collaborated with many talented artists to realize his retro sci-fi pop vision. Working during the summer of 2011 with Phnom-Penh based musician and music producer DJ Peanut, he recorded a new song which samples Fleetwood Mac’s Riahannon (1975) and the iconic Thanh Lanh’s Vietnamese and French rendition of Cher’s 1966 hit Bang Bang. Cambodian rapper RJ co-penned the Khmer rap lyrics and soulful singer Dollar sang the bittersweet hook. After several reworkings of the song, using different singers and numerous recordings in Peanut’s studio, they got the sound they wanted. LOVE BANG! is the first installment of a video/ photographic trilogy executed and exhibited in Ho Chi Minh City, Phnom Penh, and Los Angeles. These three global cities are contradictory characters, metaphors, and mirrors for the lovers. The project addresses the intersections of trauma, memory and modernity. The new songs pay tongue-in-cheek homage to Vietnamese and Cambodian tunes as well as Western pop songs, which are ever-present on the streets of the two countries.

Followed by a retrospective by Nguyễn Trinh Thi, a pioneer of Viêt Nam’s independent cinema, featuring LOVE MAN LOVE WOMAN, SPRING COMES WINTER AFTER, CHRONICLE OF A TAPE RECORDED OVER, and SONG TO THE FRONT (86 min total). In LOVE MAN LOVE WOMAN (2007 | Việt Nam | documentary | 52 min), through Master Luu Ngoc Duc, one of the most prominent spirit mediums in Hanoi, and his vibrant community, Trinh Thi explores how effeminate and gay men in homophobic Vietnam have traditionally found community and expression in the country’s popular Mother Goddess Religion, Đạo Mẫu. Using footage from the public funeral of an important poet who was banned for decades in Vietnam, SPRING COMES WINTER AFTER (2008 | Việt Nam | experimental film | 4 min) is connected to the political and historical situation of the country, provoking some questions still impermissible to be asked publicly in present-day Việt Nam. What if one can play history in reverse and then replay it again? CHRONICLE OF A TAPE RECORDED OVER (2010 | Việt Nam | single-channel | 25 min) uses ‘exquisite corpse’, a method by which each collaborator adds to a composition in sequence, as the filmmaker journeys over the Việt Nam War’s notorious Hồ Chí Minh Trail. Along once-contested roads, the filmmaker asked local villagers to contribute their tales while the camera was observing their present-day life, merging past with present, reality with fiction, in her effort to assemble a piece of collective history, a history told by the people from the bottom up. And SONG TO THE FRONT (2011 | Việt Nam | single-channel | 5.25 min) takes a historical Vietnamese war film from 1973 as its central source. Re-editing ‘Bai ca rat ran (Song to the Front)’, produced by the Vietnam Feature Film Studio and directed by Tran Dac, Trinh Thi has turned this rarely seen black and white classic feature into a small vignette that decomposes the aesthetic and romantic elements of this social-realist melodrama.  At the core of her work, a progressive exploration of her personal vision, Nguyễn Trinh Thi pays attention to gestural details, to the expressive faces of people who expose themselves and emerge out of the backdrop of a chaotic world. Her gaze is silent, anxious, humanist.

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Tony Nguyen — Enforcing the Silence  |  Q&A with Việt Lê, Duc Nguyen, and Tony Nguyen

Doors open                                     6:10 pm
Director’s introduction                    6:25 pm
Screening begins                           6:30 pm
Q&A                                                 7:30 pm
Ends                                                 9:00 pm

Tony Nguyen’s ENFORCING THE SILENCE (2011 | US | documentary | 60 min) speculates upon the unsolved 1981 murder of Lam Duong, who once founded the Vietnamese Youth Development Center in San Francisco and published a liberal newspaper that reprinted stories from communist Việt Nam following the Việt Nam War. On July 21, 1981, the 27-year-old was shot dead outside his apartment. Local police have never convicted his murderer(s). Yet within days of Lam’s murder, news spread that a shadowy, anti-Communist group had claimed responsibility, sending a chilling message to Vietnamese refugees everywhere—stay in line with your political views or risk death. Between 1982 and 1990, five more Vietnamese Americans—four of them journalists—were violently killed, many believe for political reasons. Vietnamese journalists are the largest group of immigrant journalists murdered on U.S. soil, claiming five lives out of the ten immigrant journalists killed in America since 1981. All the Vietnamese murders were linked to a terrorist group in the Vietnamese American community, but police and federal officials have yet to solve any of the cases, including Lam’s. Thirty years later, new filmmaker Tony Nguyen unlocks the mystery of Lam Duong’s life and death, and uncovers truths that Vietnamese Americans have never publicly explored. For the first time on film, Lam’s loved ones, federal investigators, and present-day journalists speak out about their experiences and reveal the risks that Vietnamese Americans have faced for exercising their first amendment rights in the U.S. Mixing personal interviews with startling historical and present-day footage, ENFORCING THE SILENCE provides a disturbing in-depth look at a war-torn community that continues to struggle to find its place in a democratic society. As the U.S. finds itself entrenched in conflicts in the Middle East, this film offers fresh insight into the long-term costs of war.

This screening includes a panel/Q&A with filmmakers/directors Tony Nguyen, Duc Nguyen of STATELESS, and Việt Lê of LOVE BANG!

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Trần Anh Hùng — Norwegian Wood — Opening Night Feature

Doors open                                   9:15 pm
Screening begins                         9:30 pm
Screening ends                           11:45 pm

Trần Anh Hùng’s NORWEGIAN WOOD (2010 | Japan | drama, romance | 133 min) illustrates Toru Watanabe’s deeply conflicting emotions during an already volatile time of global instability, set in late-1960s Tokyo. Students around the world were uniting to overthrow the establishment and Toru Watanabe’s personal life was similarly in tumult. At heart, he was devoted to his first love, beautiful and introspective Naoko, a bond forged by the long-ago tragic death of their friend. Watanabe lived with the influence of death, until an outgoing, vivacious, supremely self-confident girl, Midori, entered his life, forcing him to choose. Based on the bestselling novel by Haruki Murakami, this film ultimately concerns a young university student’s encounters with love, death, and loss in 1960s Japan, as he is torn between his desires for two very different women. Filmmakers hoping to adapt the celebrated novel repeatedly approached the reclusive Murakami, who refused to permit an adaptation until asked by acclaimed Vietnamese-French director Trần Anh Hùng (CYCLO, THE SCENT OF GREEN PAPAYA, VERTICAL RAY OF THE SUN.)

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SUNDAY APRIL 28 — ROXIE THEATER —
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Duc Nguyen— Stateless

Doors open                                    2:30 pm

Director’s Introduction                   2:45 pm
Screening begins                           2:50 pm
Screening ends                              3:50 pm

Duc Nguyen’s STATELESS (US, Philippines | 2012 | documentary | 57 min) follows Vietnamese refugeees stranded in the Philippines for nearly two decades after the closure of refugee camps. Caught at the low tide of compassion fatigue by the international community, evidenced by the closure of refugee camps in Southeast Asia, the refuges found themselves without a home country. The arriving asylum seekers were forced to repatriate to their origin countries. These particular group of Vietnamese refused to return. Thus, they survived on borrowed land and carved out an existence on the fringe of society. Without legal rights, they could not be employed, own properties or conduct business in the Philippines. In 2005, U.S. immigration officials returned to Manila to look into their cases. STATELESS depicts the tribulation of the unwanted refugees who survived on a glimpse of hope to find a home. It reveals the struggle and resiliency of the asylum seekers as they patiently hang on to the dream of a permanent home. Heart wrenching and inspiring, their stories demonstrate the will to sacrifice almost everything to gain the right to be called a citizen. This is a sneak preview screening, just ahead of full completion of the film. Filmmaker/director Duc Nguyen will be present for a director’s introduction, after appearing on Saturday April 27 (7:30pm) for the filmmaker/director Q&A with Việt Lê of LOVE BANG! and Tony Nguyen of ENFORCING THE SILENCE.

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Phương Thảo Trần & Swann Dubus — With or Without Me

Doors open                                 4:00 pm
Screening begins                        4:15 pm
Screening ends                           5:30 pm

Phương Thảo Trần and Swann Dubus’s documentary WITH OR WITHOUT ME/ TRONG HAY NGOAI TAY EM (2011) is an intimate and sensitive portrayal of two heroin addicts strung out at the edge of the map of Điện Biên province. Thi and Trung live in the lush, rice-terraced mountains of Việt Nam’s far northwest. Like many young men living on the main heroin route from Laos to China, however, they’re both addicts who’ve contracted HIV from sharing dirty needles. Both struggle with addiction and illness throughout the film, as they wrestle with the possibilities of living or dying. WITH OR WITHOUT ME was made  with the support of Medical Committee Netherlands Vietnam (MCNV). The film has screened at film festivals in Germany and Italy.

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Cuong Ngo — Pearls of the Far East

Doors open                                    5:45 pm
Screening begins                          6:00 pm
Screening ends                              7:45 pm

Cuong Ngo’s PEARLS OF THE FAR EAST (Canada, Việt Nam | 2011 | drama | 103 min) threads the inner lives and forbidden loves of seven Vietnamese women, with breathtaking scenes filmed throughout Việt Nam. Adapted from award-winning stories by Minh Ngoc Nguyen, produced by award-winning filmmakers Igor Szczurko & Tom Yarith Ker, Cuong Ngo weaves a vivid, timeless and unforgettable tapestry with characters brought to life by a gorgeous cast of acclaimed talent from Việt Nam, U.S. and Canada. Seven interrelated short films depict women who are unable to attain love, focusing on their feelings of loneliness and unrequited sense of longing. The film crosses generations, reflecting the different stages of love, beginning with a pair of children and ending with a lonely retired actress. Ngo draws attention to women in Việt Nam and their emotional battles with desire and repression. The star-studded cast includes actresses Truong Ngoc Anh (THE WHITE SILK DRESS, 2006), Nhu Quynh (VERTICAL RAY OF THE SUN, 2000), Hong Anh (MOON AT THE BOTTOM OF THE WELL, 2009), Ngo Thanh Van (THE CLASH, 2010, THE REBEL, 2007), Minh Ngoc Nguyen, and the legendary Kieu Chinh (JOY LUCK CLUB, 1993).

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Various Yxine Filmmakers — Best of Yxine Film Festival — Five Shorts

Doors open                                   8:00 pm
Screening begins                          8:15 pm
Screening ends                             9:35 pm

From the Best of Yxine Film Festival! Nguyễn Đình Anh‘s UNCLE & SON (2012 | Việt Nam | drama | 15 min) shows a boy’s tragic decision to bring a better life to his uncle, with unforeseen consequences. The film is full of emotions, typical of the folklore of Southern Vietnam. It also invites thinking about social prejudice and lack of empathy for humans who are different. Nghiêm Quỳnh Trang’s UN INTERROGATOIRE (2011 | Czech, France, Việt Nam | psychological drama | 15.5 min) uses flashback to show the memories, deceptions, and realities underlying a young newlywed Vietnamese student’s residency permit interview in France, after she marries a young Frenchman. The filmmaker gradually leads viewers into Minh’s puzzling and troubled inner world. Đỗ Quốc Trung’s ON DUTY WITH SHU QI (2012 | Việt Nam | drama | 22 min) addresses the sexual awakenings of teens in a straightforward manner. These initial contacts, whether surprising or daring, honest or cheeky, are only the foundation for two lonely individuals—a weird guy and an infamous hot girl in high school—to find their way to each other, in defiance of everything. Trần Ngọc Sáng’s GO PLAYING WITH ICE (2011 | Việt Nam |  drama | 11.5 min) revolves around three generations of ice deliverers, within the engaging landscape of the south. The film also poses several questions regarding the role of passion at work – one thing that is gradually fading away in the feverish urbanization of a changing city. Trần Dũng Thanh Huy’s 16-30 (2012 | Việt Nam | action | 17 min) follows young boys selling betting results—16:30 is not only their starting time for work,  it is the time TV stations broadcast lotto results.

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Leon Le — Dawn  |  Mark Tran — All About Dad |  Closing Night Short & Feature

Doors Open                                 9:50 pm
Screening begins                      10:05 pm
Screening ends                         11:20 pm

Leon Le’s DAWN (2012 | US | drama | 10 min) depicts two prejudiced presumptuous strangers, with much in common. After Tye perceives a racist glance from another passenger on the commuter train, a confrontation ensues. While disputing their differences, Tye discovers that what they share in common is actually what angers him the most. Both are forced to directly face their presumptions of each other and through the experience are left with a greater sense of the interconnectedness of human beings. DAWN won three important awards at the Yxine Film Fest (YxineFF) 2012, including the “Golden Heart” prize for best film in the international competition category, “Best Directing,” and a “Rainbow Heart” as the best feature on LGBT issues.

Mr. Do has raised his kids to be good Catholics and to live up to his unrealistic expectations, in Mark Tran’s ALL ABOUT DAD (2009 | US | drama | 80 min). His son Ty is abandoning pre-med to chase a less practical dream, while Linh is keeping her fiancé’s Buddhist background a secret. However, they aren’t the only kids with secrets in the Do family. It’s time Dad faces the truth that his children have grown up. Delightfully hilarious, yet mixed with great tenderness and humanism, ALL ABOUT DAD addresses the familiar theme of old world father vs. new world kids with deftness and originality.

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Estela Uribe, a student at San Francisco State University, is a DVAN intern and managing editor of diaCRITICS.

Isabelle Thuy Pelaud is Associate Professor in Asian American Studies at San Francisco State University. She authored This Is All I Choose To Tell: History and Hybridity in Vietnamese American Literature and co-edited Troubling Borders: An Anthology of Art and Literature by Southeast Asian Women in the Diaspora. A more comprehensive list of her publications is available here.

Julie Thi Underhill is a filmmaker, photographer, poet, and essayist. As a Cham-French-American (grand)daughter of conflicts in French Indochina/Việt Nam, her artistic and academic work addresses colonialism and war. She is in Veterans of War, Veterans of Peace, Troubling Borders: An Anthology of Art and Literature by Southeast Asian Women in the Diaspora, and many other collections. Her website has a complete list of publications.

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please like, share, and comment on this post! San Francisco Global Vietnamese Film Festival 2013—Interview

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If the winner was referred by a current subscriber, that person will also get a Vietnamese-related book or DVD of their choice from amazon.com worth up to $25.

AND!!!!

Each of the winners and referrers will be entered in a raffle to win Vietnamese-related books or DVDs on amazon.com worth up to $100.

So start encouraging your friends to subscribe to diaCRITICS!

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