In Conversation with Dužan Duong

Dužan Duong’s debut feature film Summer School, 2001 centres around a Vietnamese family living and working near the Czech-German border selling counterfeit goods at the market. After being sent back to Vietnam for 10 years, teenager Kien returns to his family’s market stall in Cheb but finds it difficult to settle back into life in the Czech Republic. The Czech tutor at the summer school he attends proves to be the catalyst for an exploration of his identity and sexuality, but also puts him at odds with his family. Exploring family dynamics, intergenerational conflict, immigrant struggle and childhood joys through the eyes of three family members, it has been dubbed the first Czech-Viet movie in the Czech Republic where several generations of Vietnamese live and thrive.

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May Ngo: I watched your movie, Summer School, 2001 last week and I was surprised at how much it resonated with me. I’m not Czech-Vietnamese, but I do come from an immigrant family in Australia and from the opening scenes I felt on an almost visceral level the claustrophobic feeling of being in that kind of environment – always worrying about money, always thinking about how to make it. My family had a bakery in the 80s, because that’s what all Southeast Asian migrants in Australia did at that time, and they worked 15-hour days, seven days a week. Although the film was about Vietnamese migrants selling cheap goods at the market on the Czech-German border, I could relate to the scenes where the parents are constantly working, where there is not much time, energy, or a cultural practice of being occupied with the children’s emotional and mental well-being. The movie started from the father’s perspective, who of course goes on to make some bad decisions around money, and I wondered how you came to write from that perspective? Is the movie semi-autobiographical? And if it is, how did you put yourself in your father’s shoes? Because I thought there was a lot of compassion for the father, as much as he was a loser, as much as he was hurting his family. I felt there was this real empathy for him.

Dužan Duong: Yeah. So I think the story is my life, kind of. And like, as you said, us Asians, we have similar topics that are universal for people like us. So it’s also a story of my friends and my relatives. When I was a kid, I was watching a lot of people doing a lot of stuff so I was starting to prepare for this film but I didn’t know it yet. Yeah, so it’s based on my trauma with my father or my parents in general. I think most of the art in the Vietnamese diaspora has something related to parents and traumatic events with them or the fact that they don’t have time for you.

MN: How did you get to that process of being able to write from your father’s perspective. Obviously when you were a child, you couldn’t understand necessarily, but later on I guess there must have been a process.

DD: Yeah, I think once I became a father as well. So somehow the circle connected finally, and I got to realise why my father and my mother weren’t around that much, because they have a family and they have to take care of them. And thinking about my parents, they were the first immigrants here so they didn’t have the luxury to speak the language, they didn’t have like time to do hobbies. So with this film and with like every interview, I have a feeling that I understand them better and better.

MN: I can relate to that as well because I’ve also become a parent relatively recently. It’s interesting how you come to have a lot more compassion and empathy for what they went through because being a parent is hard, even in the most privileged circumstances, and they didn’t have those privileged circumstances. But at the same time, like you said about trauma, I also think, how could they have done some of the things they did, because I would never do that to my kid. But then, I guess I don’t know, maybe if I was in a particular situation I would. I don’t know. It’s kind of like seeing the complexity of parenthood. I wouldn’t have been able to see it if I didn’t become a parent myself.

DD: I think I can relate to that. And maybe that’s why I also picked the style I used to show the different perspectives each time. Something happens and you get a new perspective. So it was a way for me to feel some compassion for my father. Father was always drunk and didn’t have time for anything except for the business. So then you go to this young boy who is carefree. At that time, I didn’t know that a word like trauma existed. I was just having fun. But the more I grew up, the more I realised that there is some burden, some like unsolved reality where me and my father don’t communicate.

MN: I felt you captured that really well from the younger brother’s point of view. As much as there were challenges, difficulties and trauma in his childhood, there was also joy, a kind of joy that is particularly unique to youth. It was nice to see that childhood isn’t all trauma, even in the worst situations children can be in the moment and carefree as well.

And speaking of perspective, I really liked how the film was split into almost separate chapters, one for each character in the family where we follow the story from their point of view – every character in the family that is, except for the mother. There was a chapter for the father and the two sons, but none from the perspective of the mother. I was waiting, thinking it would be the last part because she is literally the glue holding the family together. And when it didn’t happen, I have to admit I was disappointed. Just in general as well, how society overlooks mothers, how they’re always invisible, how their labour is rendered invisible. I wondered why you chose not to give the mother her own section?

DD: Yeah, I’m getting this question quite a lot. Foremost, I wanted to explore the masculinity aspect of when you are the father and you need to take care of the family, and then you have this son, who is like, looking up to the father, but also exploring stuff about being a man or boy or good brother, even. And we wanted, when we showed the mother, to at least have like the biggest impact, even though she is overlooked by like everybody. We made sure that once she appears on the screen, she gets to decide like the very crucial stuff. So she’s the one who tells the father, go to your son and speak with him. He just lost his grandma. Also, we are not done with this story. I’m planning to write a book, actually, just from the perspective of the mother. It could be a really good bundle, you first watch the film and then read the book, you can finish the whole family circle.  

MM: I read somewhere that you said that most of the actors were not professional actors. How did you get them to give those performances in the movie? What was your process?

DD: I think it was quite easy because I’m this easy going guy who likes to like fool around. And these boys, they were all energy and they didn’t want to get bored. So I was just using their energy and letting them do anything they want. I was just the observer with a camera. It’s kind of my style maybe because I don’t want to use any professional actors. I don’t feel the authenticity and it’s not real for me. So I’d rather have a not perfect person who will be very authentic than a very skilled one.

MN: The performances were really emotional and felt very real. It’s great you were able to get those kind of performances out of people who haven’t been trained to act in front of the camera. But maybe it wasn’t acting for them, maybe part of it, they were bringing their own experiences and their own feelings into it.

DD: Exactly. Because if you think about Ken, the red hair guy, he experienced almost the same thing as the character. So he didn’t have to like think about how would it be to grow up without a father for 10 years. And we found out that a lot of people from the cast have like these universal experiences that are in the film.

MN: What was the dynamic of North Vietnamese migration to the Czech Republic? Why were parents sending their kids back to Vietnam for a few years?

DD: So the Vietnamese from the North came in the eighties and nineties and they have this mindset that they were sent to the West and they have to earn a lot of money, you know? So when you are in danger of not earning a lot of money and you have a small kid but don’t have the backup of grandmother or grandfather or extended family to help raise the kid while you work, you simply choose the goal of earning money. So you send the kids back so that you have time to do it, time to work, with the goal of the kids returning in the future when you are more settled. Also at that time, the future wasn’t very clear because the police raids on the markets for fake goods were happening quite a lot. So they weren’t sure if they would make a lot of money or what will happen to the kids or to the family. So they chose this. It’s a sacrifice they were making, for the benefit of the family, for the future. It’s just a very sad situation because I cannot imagine having to make that choice.

MN: I wanted to ask you about the Czech film industry and how challenging it was to try to get this made. As I was watching it, I actually felt quite emotional knowing that this is the first ever Czech Vietnamese feature film to be shown in mainstream cinemas. I felt how powerful it must be for people to see their own community represented in on the screen, to see their struggles, joys, and life experiences explored in the arts for the first time. Because in Australia, we haven’t had that moment in film yet – the film industry is still very, very white, believe it or not. Even though it’s been like over 40 years since Southeast Asian migration, and Asian migration in general in Australia. There still hasn’t been an Asian Australian film in the mainstream. I think in literature there is now more representation, more writers from Asian backgrounds, but the film industry, no. So I was curious to know how difficult it was for you to get this film made, compared to say a non-Vietnamese Czech film.

DD: When I started I felt a lot of support because, the thing is, the relationship between Czechs and the Vietnamese is really kind of magical. I would say the Czechs really love our food. They also really love our mini-markets because we are open all the time. And so it is this kind of servicing relationship, where the Vietnamese give good service and the Czechs are the good customers, this transaction has made it a really good foundation for our relationship with each other. Because our parents they were really good shopkeepers wanting to earn money and the Czechs they like that. Yeah. They love it.

MN: You are the good migrants, right? As opposed to the bad ones.

DD: Exactly. We work hard and the Czechs they like this kind of migration. My generation is like the first ones that grew up here, so this was the right time to do it (make the film). Also the film industry here is not that big. They yearn for something new, some fresh voices because it’s all the same. Like it’s just comedies or historical stuff about communism. So when you come with something fresh, they kind of want to know more about you because they have like shopped at your place for 10 years, but they don’t know anything about you. So this curiosity of theirs, it was opening a lot of doors for me.

MN: I want to ask you about a question about cultural identity. It’s something I’ve been thinking about because I have a daughter who is half-Czech. How do you see, for example, your child growing up here? Like, are they Czech? Are they Vietnamese? How will the next generation see themselves?

DD: I get this question a lot because people don’t know. Because you never know. So I think it will be dependent on the individual families. For instance, my family, my son and my wife, we live near both sets of grandparents. It’s just like five minutes’ walk away. So thanks to this, my son can speak Vietnamese really well, even better than me. And he can sing a lot of Vietnamese songs that even I don’t understand. For them, it will be a blend. I think you get this upgrade.

MN: You’re living in Czech Republic. You’re kind of Czech, but still you have like another cultural story to you. So you know more. You’re richer than someone who’s monocultural.

DD: Yes, exactly. But I think they will be Czech because they grew up here.

MN: I understand what you mean. I grew up in Australia, so I do feel Australian culturally. English is more my mother tongue than my mother tongue, if that makes sense. But just as a foreigner here, looking from the outside in, Czech culture seems quite homogenous. And there’s the rise of ethnonationalism all over Europe. Do you think that Czech society can incorporate the idea of what or who is Czech to include those who have multiple cultures, come from other backgrounds and not just solely Czech ethnicity?  

DD: Yeah. You know, this is really weird because the Vietnamese are very loved by the Czechs. But if you take the Ukrainians who are a much bigger population than the Vietnamese and are much closer in culture to Slavic culture – but there is this whole misinformation and propaganda around that has just made Czechs hate the Ukrainians. So that’s why I say it’s like a kind of magic that the Vietnamese and Czechs have clicked. Because if you take other cultures, like African, Czech’s are quite racist about people from other cultures. Maybe part of it is the stereotype that the Vietnamese will work hard. They will not complain.

MN: They will not make any trouble. They will not question the culture, is that part of the stereotype?

DD: Yeah, I think a little bit because I see a lot of positive racism towards me and my community because everybody thinks we are really perfect and we are very clever and everything. But they don’t think like this about the others. And I think the main reason is that maybe we were here for quite a long time and they got a lot of time to like adjust to our culture. So everything is just about time. I think, because in America, there is a lot of cultures and everybody’s like, okay, it’s their culture, but we are Americans. So it will happen here as well. But because of the communism, we didn’t get to have this chance to mingle.

MN: What are you working on next, besides the novel from the mother’s perspective that you mentioned?

DD: I’m using the momentum I have, so I started to do three new projects. I’m working on an anime, inspired by the Japanese tradition of manga but it will be about a Vietnamese girl. It’s about technology, how it consumes us, how much you spend online versus how much you spend offline. How it changes our kids, our next generation. Because I’m a dad now and have the same concerns. And another project I’m starting is wanting to make this anthology about my community in the eighties and nineties, similar to what Steve McQueen did for the West Indian Caribbean community in the UK. Because the people who remember that period are still alive, so this is the right time to do it because they can still tell you about it and even deserve to see it on screen.

MN: What has been the reception like of the film from the Vietnamese community? How was it showing it to your family and friends?

DD: We have different groups who responded differently to the film.  So the first group are those Vietnamese who have just arrived, the ones who will be taking over the grocery stores and nail salons. They’ve lived here for like five, 10 years max. And they are kind of accustomed to the propaganda films and how beautiful they are, romantic and epic and everything. So when they go to watch our film, they somehow, I think, get scared or feel this anger like why is it so authentic? Why is it showing all the cracks we have? Maybe they feel vulnerable and exposed by the movie, they feel a lot of shame. So there were a lot of hate posts about the film. Which was really good PR for us. And for the kids who grew up here, the Vietnamese boys and girls and our parents, they’ve been very supportive because they know what this is about. And they’ve accepted Czech culture already, because this film is not 100% Vietnamese. It’s a Czech-Viet film.  There is a lot of my personality as a Czech person. So they relate to it a lot.  And everybody who sees this film and is a Vietnamese teenager, they’ve come to me and said that they see themselves on the screen.

MN: That’s really powerful. I find writing about my community or my family can be very tricky. How much to reveal or not, because people don’t always appreciate that you show everything.

DD: Exactly. I’m half Czech as well, so I don’t mind showing all the cracks because I have a different upbringing.

MN: I was really surprised at how much I responded to the film emotionally, because I also saw a bit of myself on screen, or not myself necessarily, but my family’s experience. And I think maybe that’s because the migration experience is in some ways universal, like you said. But it’s interesting because my husband, who’s Czech, saw it with me and it didn’t emotionally resonate with him, which I was disappointed about. I was like, why aren’t you crying?  Why don’t you feel sad when it’s sad? I guess I had hoped that there is something universal in the human experience but maybe that’s asking too much of a movie. 

DD: Yeah. But you’re right because for some Czechs, the film doesn’t hit that hard. There is a lot of Czech people who really resonated with some topics in the film and they really responded well. I think one, if the person has daddy issues or something like that, he can really connect to it right away. 

MN: That’s the other thing that I had a question about, and I didn’t think about it until I read a review of the film and the reviewer said something like the gay relationship (between the older brother and his Czech tutor) was left unresolved. We don’t know what happens between the two men in the end. But it didn’t even occur to me because I didn’t really think that was the primary relationship in the movie, the main focus was the dynamic between the parents and the children, so I didn’t even think about it or felt that resolution was missing. But I wondered if you received any feedback or responses from the community about the portrayal of that gay relationship. Whether any young gay Czech-Vietnamese people have said anything to you about it, how they felt it was portrayed on screen.

DD: I think what we did, it wasn’t like I planned for but I’m glad it happened. This film can also be like an opening door for this kind of situation at home where you have to tell your parents that you might not have grandkids for them because you love another man or woman.  So I know some people who are in this situation and I encourage them that if you want to come out, you can take your parents to the cinema, you can experience this film together. And like later on, maybe you can open up the topic with them.

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