Documentary Educational Resources - Geography / Asia / Vietnam / All Films

Drums on the Red River

Thu, 30 Aug 2018 07:05:00 GMT

Drums on the Red River
Buy Now: $320.00

Once a year in Yen Vinh, Hung Yen Province a grand three-day festival is held at a temple by the banks of the Red River to worship the god Chu Dong Tu and his two wives, Tien Dung and Tay Sa. During the festival, three area villages converge on the main temple complex to participate in the ritual offerings, folk games, ca tru singing, and other events. On the second day of the festival, a water procession takes place on the Red River that mimics the Princess Tien Dung's fated river journey in which she encountered the poor fisherman Chu Dong Tu hiding in the sand. During the procession, in an elaborate ritual conducted by the elders of the participating villages, water is poured into a porcelain jar. This sacred water will be used in temple rituals throughout the year. This film documents the Chu Dong Tu festival of 2007. The festival was revived in 1986, the year in which the economic and political reforms were passed in Vietnam. The festival is an important example of the widespread revival of traditional folk festivals that has followed reform.

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Daughter from Danang

Thu, 30 Aug 2018 07:04:00 GMT

Daughter from Danang
Buy Now: $320.00

A heartbreaking documentary that upsets your expectations of happily-ever-afters, Daughter from Danang is a riveting emotional drama of longing, identity, and the personal legacy of war.

To all outward appearances, Heidi is the proverbial "all-American girl", hailing from small town Pulaski, Tenn. But her birth name was Mai Thi Hiep. Born in Danang, Vietnam in 1968, she's the mixed-race daughter of an American serviceman and a Vietnamese woman. Fearing for her daughter's safety at the war's end, Hiep's mother sent her to the U.S. on Operation Babylift, a Ford administration plan to relocate orphans and mixed-race children to the U.S. for adoption before they fell victim to a frighteningly uncertain future in Vietnam after the Americans pulled out.

Kim believed her daughter would be in danger in Vietnam. "What I heard really worried me," Kim says. "If you had worked for Americans and had racially mixed children, they said those kids would be gathered up, they would be soaked in gasoline and burnt." The parting was devastating to both mother and child, who would know nothing about each other for 22 years.

Now, as if by a miracle, they are reunited in Danang. But what seems like the cue for a happy ending is anything but. Heidi and her Vietnamese relatives find themselves caught in a confusing clash of cultures and at the mercy of conflicting emotions that will change their lives forever. Through intimate and sometimes excruciating moments, Daughter from Danang profoundly shows how wide the chasms of cultural difference and how deep the wounds of war can run — even within one family.

At its core, filmmakers Gail Dolgin and Vicente Franco have created a thought-provoking film about identity, family and culture: What shapes our sense of self? What defines our concept of family? And how do cultural expectations influence our choices? Since the film takes places against the backdrop of the Vietnam War it reveals how the trauma inflicted by that conflict continues to haunt and harm those who survived it.

SELECTED SCREENINGS & AWARDS

Academy Award Nominee, Best Documentary Feature, 2002
Grand Jury Prize, Best Documentary, Sundance Film Festival, 2002
Grand Prize, Golden Gate Award, San Francisco International Film Festival, 2002
Feature Selection, New Directors/New Films, New York, 2002

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Hanoi Eclipse

Wed, 29 Aug 2018 13:26:00 GMT

Hanoi Eclipse
Buy Now: $320.00

The documentary follows the challenges faced by the groundbreaking and controversial Vietnamese band Dai Lam Linh, while rehearsing and performing in their hometown of Hanoi. It shows how the band came together to create a unique form of popular music, which is both international in outlook and rooted in Vietnamese traditions and aesthetics.

Followed by scandal at every turn for their experimental sound and their use of sexually explicit lyrics, the band have dared to flout taboos and fight for their creative freedom. Shunned by state-run organizations and disliked by the Vietnamese censors, the band were only able to record their debut album because of support from the Centre Culturel Français de Hanoi. Dai Lam Linh's story of creative, political and financial struggle reveals what it is like to be a contemporary musician in a one-party state where cultural expression is tightly controlled.

Dai Lam Linh was established by the male composer, Dai, an ex-soldier who fought in the Second Indochina War (known as the "Vietnam War"), and two female singers, Lam and Linh. The film explores how Dai overcame the trauma of war by writing songs to honor the memory of the war dead and how the singers Lam and Linh embarked on an inner journey to discovery their extraordinary voices.

With vivid footage of the band working in the city of Hanoi, the film documents the process of recording Dai Lam Linh's debut album in 2009 and features an album-launch concert in the prestigious Hanoi Opera House.

“Barley Norton ...is to be highly commended for his wonderful work with the storyline, filming, interviewing and recording, and everything else it took to make this highly successful production. It is a very impressive musical journey, at times scary, noisy, funny, touching, thought-provoking, and always challenging, yet emotionally rewarding ... This is truly a remarkable documentary film, and I highly recommend it ... It is a film that all university music programmes should own, and that all music students should be required to see”
— Dale Olsen, Yearbook for Traditional Music

“Beautifully filmed, this is an important document not just about Dai Lam Linh's struggle to make the music they want to make, but also about the act of making art in Vietnam today. Since there are so few documentaries on contemporary culture in Vietnam, Norton is to be congratulated for opening a window into an intriguing musical culture”
— Songlines, The World Music Magazine

“Hanoi Eclipse… provides a well-researched and engaging look at music-making in contemporary Vietnam.”
— Jennifer Milioto Matsue, Asian Music

“The film will be of great value to those interested in international contemporary music and those interested in contemporary Vietnamese culture. It is also an invaluable contribution to the as yet small number of documentaries about contemporary Vietnamese society that are firmly grounded in in-depth research.”
— Lauren Meeker, Ethnomusicology

SELECTED SCREENINGS & AWARDS

Commendation - Intangible Culture Film Prize, RAI International Film Festival of Ethnographic Film, 2011
Open City Docs Fest, UK, 2012
Lifescapes South East Asian Film Festival, Thailand, 2012
Jean Rouch International Film Festival, Paris, 2011
Society for Visual Anthropology Film and Media Festival, Montreal, 2011
12th RAI International Festival of Ethnographic Film, London, 2011
Vietnamese International Film Festival, 2011
San Francisco Diasporic Vietnamese Film Festival, San Francisco, 2011
British Forum for Ethnomusicology Conference, Falmouth, UK, 2011
Society for Ethnomusicology Conference, Los Angeles, 2010
EUROSEAS Conference (The European Association for Southeast Asian Studies), Gothenburg, Sweden, 2010

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The Left Eye of God

Wed, 29 Aug 2018 06:41:00 GMT

The Left Eye of God
Buy Now: $320.00

Caodaists worship the left eye as an Asian synthesis of eastern and western traditions. In this film, they tell their stories of exile, anti-colonial struggle, and building immigrant congregations in California. Footage of rituals and temples, and archival images combine to provide a personal perspective on a largely unknown mystical tradition. Older religious leaders tell how this new faith emerged in colonial Saigon in the 1920s and was soon followed by one in four people in southern Vietnam.

Incorporating European figures like Victor Hugo and Jeanne d'Arc, Caodaists tried to heal the wounds of colonialism, but suffered persecution from the French, the Diem government, and the communists. After 1975, new spirit mediums in California developed an innovative style of worship for a generation of followers facing the challenges of the American context and newly re-opened contact with religious centers in Vietnam. How independent can California congregations be from sacred authorities in the homeland?

A more complete analysis of the changing worlds of Vietnamese Caodaists can be found in "Caodai Exile and Redemption: A New Vietnamese Religion's Struggle for Identity" in Religion and Social Justice for Immigrants, Rutgers University Press 2006: p. 191-210, and in the Material Religion journal article "Seeing Syncretism as Visual Blasphemy: Critical Eyes on Caodai Religious Architecture" 2010 6(1).

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