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450 - Can The Viet Film Fest Shift Cultural Narratives? Eric Nong - 2025 Viet Film Festival Preview · The Vietnamese with Kenneth Nguyen

0:00
[SPEAKER_01]: Welcome to the Vietnamese podcast Eric Nong is with us today.
0:04
[SPEAKER_01]: He is the artistic director of the Vitt Film Festival.
0:07
[SPEAKER_01]: We had him on last year to give an overview.
0:11
[SPEAKER_01]: We have the kickoff of the Vitt Film Festival very soon.
0:15
[SPEAKER_01]: I hate to say dates on this because sometimes we go back and forth.
0:21
[SPEAKER_01]: But it's coming up soon and welcome to the podcast, Eric.
0:25
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, thank you, and for having me back kind of good to speak with you this morning.
0:29
[SPEAKER_01]: First of all, let's talk about the overview.
0:31
[SPEAKER_01]: What are the dates?
0:33
[SPEAKER_01]: Where is it located?
0:35
[SPEAKER_01]: So people get an idea, right?
0:38
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, the film Fest 2025 is going to be the 16th edition of the festival.
0:44
[SPEAKER_02]: It will be the so it's a hybrid festival, both online and in person.
0:49
[SPEAKER_02]: online, we will be running from Saturday, October the 4th, through Sunday, October the 19th, just to be a little bit more specific, we end at 11.59 pm specific on Sunday, October the 19th.
1:03
[SPEAKER_02]: So, if you're midstream at that time, it will unfortunately cut off midstream.
1:08
[SPEAKER_02]: So, just do you wear your time and then it's Sunday.
1:12
[SPEAKER_02]: In person, we're at the Free to Cinema in Santa Ana on Friday, October 10th, Saturday, October 11th and Sunday, October 12th, pretty much all day each day.
1:23
[SPEAKER_02]: Saturday, we're going pretty long.
1:24
[SPEAKER_02]: I think we're going to be there through almost midnight on Saturday.
1:28
[SPEAKER_02]: So those are the dates.
1:30
[SPEAKER_02]: Those are the times.
1:31
[SPEAKER_02]: We hope that people who are listening and who are watching will be of
1:36
[SPEAKER_01]: And we'll include the link in the description of the podcast.
1:41
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm very excited this year because I'm excited honestly every year for Viet Film Festival.
1:49
[SPEAKER_01]: For people in the film industry in LA who are Vietnamese,
1:54
[SPEAKER_01]: This is a place where we all get together to meet each other.
1:56
[SPEAKER_01]: This is a place where we all get together to congregate, to catch up, and to, I mean, honestly, let's face it.
2:03
[SPEAKER_01]: This is a place where we meet to get jobs, for somebody like me, and other people we get in and say, hello's.
2:12
[SPEAKER_01]: But,
2:13
[SPEAKER_01]: This is the seed of our film community, and we get to share it with the public as well.
2:19
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's a very exciting year.
2:22
[SPEAKER_01]: In particular, obviously, like you said Saturday night, it's going to be a big night for a movie that might differ in Baldwin, the screener is playing, and that's a real big controversial film.
2:33
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's showing, I think, on two screens now, right?
2:38
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, they see only, yeah, it is the only film this year that will have the honor in playing both both theaters of the free to the free to the free to the free to the two-screen theater.
2:46
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, exciting.
2:49
[SPEAKER_01]: So what's the overall theme envisioned for the film festival this year?
2:53
[SPEAKER_01]: And how do you all come up with the theme?
2:56
[SPEAKER_02]: So regarding the theme, that's a little difficult to do because you would need to have some sort of overarching narrative for aesthetic through line that would justify it.
3:09
[SPEAKER_02]: So I think VIF has kind of departed from that.
3:13
[SPEAKER_02]: since I took Ogras artistic director in 2021, but at the same time regarding like short throw sets, we still theme them according to again, as I said, narrative and aesthetic commonalities.
3:31
[SPEAKER_02]: smaller themes that we have noticed this year that, again, don't pervade the entirety of the festival or notable.
3:37
[SPEAKER_02]: I've got two things in mind in particular.
3:39
[SPEAKER_02]: Last year, I think I have, my may have briefly mentioned that we have been seeing since I have been in this position, the gradual decline in movies that have directly
3:52
[SPEAKER_02]: or obliquely commented about the Vietnam War.
3:58
[SPEAKER_02]: I think that's maybe generational, that's a generational shift, a director-tindo speculated that it's, quote-unquote, battle fatigue, so to speak.
4:09
[SPEAKER_02]: This here we saw Spike.
4:11
[SPEAKER_02]: And maybe we should have been expecting this because I'm sure many listeners have heard multiple times on this podcast over the last year.
4:20
[SPEAKER_02]: This is an important year for the Vietnamese diasporic community.
4:23
[SPEAKER_02]: This is the 50th anniversary of the fall of Saigon.
4:26
[SPEAKER_02]: So maybe we should have expected this.
4:29
[SPEAKER_02]: So we have a few more stories again that come in directly on the war or wartime.
4:35
[SPEAKER_02]: The stringer obviously is one of those.
4:38
[SPEAKER_02]: I think very interestingly and we probably won't say this way too out loud.
4:44
[SPEAKER_02]: One of the narrative short films that we have this year is a Belgian Vietnamese co-production.
4:52
[SPEAKER_02]: It's called Good Buy My Dove.
4:55
[SPEAKER_02]: It's showing in the short film set entitled, where the heart settles, it's actually a northern Vietnamese narrative of centered on two children, as they try to work, they orient back to find their mother, mother who is, I'm assuming it's annoying, but it's some big city in northern Vietnam, because they miss her.
5:13
[SPEAKER_02]: It's kind of like a line in which the wardrobe situation where the mother sent the children
5:24
[SPEAKER_02]: So there's that.
5:25
[SPEAKER_02]: I think the second, um, second small theme.
5:30
[SPEAKER_02]: I've we've noticed this here is that we've had a spike as well in animated shorts.
5:35
[SPEAKER_02]: Now, fit film fest in the past, probably got worn maybe two animated short films in and submitted every other every year or so.
5:45
[SPEAKER_02]: And for a festival of our size, that is to be expected.
5:51
[SPEAKER_02]: last year had a record for this year, we broke that record again, shattered it really.
5:57
[SPEAKER_02]: We had 10 acceptances and seven of those are going to be playing together in a short film set called drawn to the screen.
6:06
[SPEAKER_02]: It's going to be six of them if you watch online just to allow audiences to
6:18
[SPEAKER_02]: Vietnamese individuals working in animation how differently they're approaching their work.
6:25
[SPEAKER_02]: So I think that's something audiences can look forward to as well.
6:29
[SPEAKER_01]: That's very exciting.
6:30
[SPEAKER_01]: It makes me think about, and I'm going to make a quick tangent here, about the sort of prolification of AI and Sora 2 now.
6:42
[SPEAKER_01]: Are you guys getting a lot of submissions for AI animated films?
6:49
[SPEAKER_02]: So I would not say I have the most trained eye when it comes to looking at AI generated works, but from what I've seen from all of our submissions, I just don't detect that at all.
7:01
[SPEAKER_02]: These are
7:03
[SPEAKER_02]: lovingly created CG animation or hand drawn animation.
7:08
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't detect the use of AI at any of them.
7:12
[SPEAKER_02]: A good number of them are student films.
7:14
[SPEAKER_02]: There are a few independent works of American animation in there as well.
7:20
[SPEAKER_02]: And then we all have one major Vietnamese studio who sent us a proof of concept for a film that they hoped to expand it to a feature further down the road.
7:32
[SPEAKER_02]: I think the last one playing in Jordan and the screen in person is the tale of Chen Tan Jun.
7:41
[SPEAKER_02]: It's an extremely, widely experimental work.
7:43
[SPEAKER_02]: It was the first Vietnamese animated short film to play at the Anasi International Film Festival.
7:49
[SPEAKER_02]: For those who do not know what ANACY is, ANACY is essentially the CAN of animation.
7:54
[SPEAKER_02]: It's in this alpine resort town in France, and there is no more prestigious, all animated film festival than that.
8:03
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think the tail of Chantan Zun, which is directed by Hatchelado, Hatchel became the first director of Vietnamese descent to have a film shown at ANACY in three decades.
8:17
[SPEAKER_01]: That's a huge feat.
8:19
[SPEAKER_01]: It's amazing.
8:20
[SPEAKER_01]: Very proud of our Vietnamese artist there.
8:24
[SPEAKER_01]: I just wanted to correct a award that I just said earlier.
8:27
[SPEAKER_01]: I just I said prolification.
8:29
[SPEAKER_01]: It's 70.
8:29
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm in the morning.
8:30
[SPEAKER_01]: I met proliferation.
8:32
[SPEAKER_01]: So I just wanted to correct myself for all of you listening.
8:35
[SPEAKER_01]: It's it's it's brutal sometimes to go this early, but here we are Yeah, I am Thinking so much about AI these days and how festivals like yours or perhaps handling and thinking about the future of Filmmakers that are using entire AI You know tools to make films up do you have you guys talked about this money chance?
9:04
[SPEAKER_02]: I think there has been some minor talk about it, but I think I know that technology is a long and quickly, but where we are October 20, 25, I don't think AI is that sophisticated enough yet to completely, how do I say this, mimic human authorship,
9:27
[SPEAKER_02]: of a short film, let alone a feature.
9:30
[SPEAKER_02]: I think it would be detectable very quickly, but I just, I don't, I do not believe we had even a submission that even touched upon it.
9:38
[SPEAKER_02]: Perhaps likely, because I know that there are some feature films over the last year that have had that
9:48
[SPEAKER_02]: have used AI for voice correction, for visual adjustments.
9:57
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm thinking of last year, Brady Corbets.
10:02
[SPEAKER_02]: Excuse me.
10:03
[SPEAKER_02]: The title escapes me right now, but
10:07
[SPEAKER_02]: The brutalist excuse me.
10:08
[SPEAKER_02]: So I think what he did there was that he used AI to help correct Adrian Brody's Hungarian speech, which again, it's very difficult to speak Hungarian and Adrian Brody's not a native Hungarian speaker And he had to correct some of the Vulcum reflections there and that was undetectable to all of us to everybody.
10:25
[SPEAKER_02]: So making that's coming on What as for full implementation across the film to fully write a screenplay using AI
10:33
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't think we've seen that yet, but we have talked about it, but not to a great extent of this point.
10:40
[SPEAKER_02]: I think it is something we do need to go over however.
10:43
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's coming, but yeah, you're right, it's not, it's not their yet, but I think in another year or two of the technology will be, you know, I mean, you're really prompting, so there's some artistry there, right, because you still have to, you have to still author a story and you're just using tools that are, you know, AI tools to get to, to get to the point of of what you're trying to say.
11:08
[SPEAKER_01]: But how many films this year are being showcased?
11:12
[SPEAKER_01]: And what are you excited about?
11:16
[SPEAKER_01]: What is Eric excited about?
11:19
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
11:20
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, there are 59 films that are going to be shown in the festival this year.
11:23
[SPEAKER_02]: That's 40, 7 short films and 12 features.
11:29
[SPEAKER_02]: So again, we have a split virtual and in-person element.
11:33
[SPEAKER_02]: There's no way to watch a single film if you're attending in person because we have overlapping times.
11:39
[SPEAKER_02]: and there are some virtual exclusive films in addition to in-person exclusive films.
11:46
[SPEAKER_02]: As for things I'm most excited about, I've already talked to you about drawn to the screen, but I will say that when I took over this position as artistic director, one of the things I said in my job interview to get this position was that I did want to expand the presence of animation of the festival.
12:03
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, and I'm glad that gradually that has occurred.
12:06
[SPEAKER_02]: So of course, I'm looking forward to that.
12:07
[SPEAKER_02]: Uh, I am also looking forward to, um, shall we say, um, I think our mid-afternoon slots on Saturday, probably most of all.
12:20
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm so sorry that the films are competing against each other, but there was some schedule, uh,
12:32
[SPEAKER_02]: mid afternoon on Saturday.
12:33
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's the combination of a short film called on Healing Landbird's Purch and a feature film year of the cat.
12:41
[SPEAKER_02]: Can't have you heard of either of those?
12:43
[SPEAKER_01]: I actually have I know both the directors and I heard both, oh, I've watched you have the cat by Tony and I loved it.
12:53
[SPEAKER_01]: I think everybody should go see that film.
12:55
[SPEAKER_01]: It's fascinating.
12:56
[SPEAKER_01]: Well done.
12:56
[SPEAKER_01]: And on Healing Land, I know Naja and I haven't had a chance to watch yet and I'm going to do my best to come down and see it and support Naja.
13:08
[SPEAKER_02]: very briefly for listeners that their on-healing language perched the preceding short film is about the surviving family members whose lives were most impacted by a photo known as side-on execution.
13:24
[SPEAKER_02]: This is a Pulitzer Prize winning photo from the Vietnam War.
13:27
[SPEAKER_02]: I do warn you if you have never seen it, if you look it up, it is
13:31
[SPEAKER_02]: It is, it is the moment just before something truly horrible.
13:37
[SPEAKER_02]: So it takes the point of view of the surviving family members again of the subjects of that photo.
13:43
[SPEAKER_02]: And one other subject whose family was also impacted by that photo.
13:48
[SPEAKER_02]: And it crossed stitches how their lives have been impacted from the moment depicted in psychonic execution and how either
14:00
[SPEAKER_02]: harassment, bullying, the grief over their missing love of ones or survivors, guilt has racked their lives ever since.
14:09
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think it's a beautiful directorial debut from Nasha.
14:12
[SPEAKER_02]: So on Healing Lambert's perch, we'll precede your the cat.
14:15
[SPEAKER_02]: I think on Healing Land is already qualified for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Film, having won an award at Cleveland and Cleveland is an Academy recognized short film testable.
14:29
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, the the following feature is a year of the cat throwing my Tony Nguyen Tony is not into our festival in a while, but we're glad to have him back.
14:38
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, so Tony lost his lost all contact with his father after the fall of Saigon, and this is his extremely raw and personal documentary.
14:49
[SPEAKER_02]: in which we find him attempting to learn more about his father, his potential whereabouts, and him hoping to reconnect with him and other family members and Vietnam.
15:03
[SPEAKER_02]: We paired both of those together because of, I think, just both for war stories, obviously, or war Jason's stories and the emotional rawness of both.
15:13
[SPEAKER_02]: It will be a
15:15
[SPEAKER_02]: very emotionally moving screening we think for I think the one-and-a-half generation in the first generation So I think I that's one of my favorite pairings of the festival right there I'm gonna move into the other theater theater to playing at the same time is a short film called war ok And a check film called summer school 2001 war ok comes from Lucia Tran She's a set she's a bay area base director
15:45
[SPEAKER_02]: Essentially, it is about a dysfunctional family in which all the small kids swear like sailors.
15:51
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a comedic short film about a dysfunctional family that goes into a dramatic feature film about a dysfunctional family.
15:59
[SPEAKER_02]: Summer School, 2001, again, comes from the Czech Republic.
16:02
[SPEAKER_02]: It's directed by Duzhen Zun.
16:05
[SPEAKER_02]: And this is Dujan's directorial debut.
16:09
[SPEAKER_02]: It's also special because it's the first check film.
16:13
[SPEAKER_02]: Excuse me, check feature film involving Vietnamese protagonists at its very center.
16:20
[SPEAKER_02]: We have a number of short films from the Czech Republic before.
16:23
[SPEAKER_02]: Come our way to the festival.
16:25
[SPEAKER_02]: those are short films and the Czechs have a proud film history.
16:31
[SPEAKER_02]: I'd put them up there with and I know this won't.
16:33
[SPEAKER_02]: I'd put them up there with the France, the Germany's, the Italy's of the movie world.
16:38
[SPEAKER_02]: But anyways, it's about
16:41
[SPEAKER_02]: This family, a father, a mother, older brother, younger brother, and it employs a structure in which we see the prospect we see certain events through the perspectives of the father, the older brother and the younger brother.
16:56
[SPEAKER_02]: It's very roshamom like for those of you who know what I'm referring to.
17:05
[SPEAKER_02]: go in motion when the older brother who has spent last 10 years of his life in Vietnam, caring for his grandmother, returns home to the Czech Republic, hoping for a welcoming family reunion, but all he finds is familial strife.
17:18
[SPEAKER_02]: And a younger brother who barely knows him, very jealous about all the attention that his older brother is getting.
17:25
[SPEAKER_02]: I think for a lot of,
17:28
[SPEAKER_02]: young man in particular, who are about my age, they will notice a lot of period details that say, hey, I was about that old in the early 2000s, and I kind of remember how like was like then.
17:40
[SPEAKER_02]: And in general, I think summer school 2001 is a question, what is it like to be a man on your straddling between two worlds?
17:48
[SPEAKER_02]: And what does masculinity look like when you are in that very vulnerable age of,
17:55
[SPEAKER_02]: your late teenage years and your and just before you become a tween.
18:01
[SPEAKER_02]: So I thank for some of us who are again, on the hills like myself, I think we'll find a lot of a lot of commonalities with the characters on that film, at least the kids.
18:13
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, you brought up the picture in a healing land by Naja.
18:20
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm just truncating these titles just for a sick
18:26
[SPEAKER_01]: And there's a Pulitzer photo at the center of the Stringer by Bamwen, also playing this year.
18:35
[SPEAKER_01]: There are two different takes on these photos, but at the center is these Pulitzer photos that are being showcased in the film.
18:46
[SPEAKER_01]: It's very interesting that these two are being shown this year
18:54
[SPEAKER_01]: how much these films are touching the Vietnam War this year and it's I think we are moving away from it but in Vietnam there has been a string of feature films that are showing details of the Vietnam War from the side of the obviously for the Vietnamese government.
19:14
[SPEAKER_01]: It is a huge year but not as big as I thought it would be to be honest
19:20
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I wanted to recognize that Vietnam has submitted red rain as their international feature submission to the Academy Awards this year.
19:32
[SPEAKER_02]: For those who don't know red rain is, I think now the highest grossing Vietnamese feature of all time, it deals with, it's part of the battle of way, I believe, correct?
19:46
[SPEAKER_02]: And it is, of course, mostly from the point of view from the north.
19:51
[SPEAKER_02]: So they have their big film over in Vietnam that was released very recently.
19:57
[SPEAKER_02]: So obviously, they have not submitted to Viet Film Fest.
20:00
[SPEAKER_02]: I think it would start controversy if we did show it.
20:03
[SPEAKER_02]: But at the same time, I do kind of wish that they submit, because I do want to see it and see it for myself.
20:10
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm one of those people.
20:11
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think it's fair, right?
20:13
[SPEAKER_01]: I would, I want to watch it too because we are, you know, this is, this is our world.
20:18
[SPEAKER_01]: But what would be, I mean, Vidfilm Festival's stance on this would, would you, would you accept it into the festival?
20:29
[SPEAKER_02]: That is a great question that I cannot fully answer.
20:33
[SPEAKER_02]: I've already told you that we accepted an northern narrative earlier in the center view.
20:38
[SPEAKER_02]: That was goodbye my dove from Felix Wang back again.
20:41
[SPEAKER_02]: He's a Belgian Vietnamese filmmaker and I also wanted to note that goodbye my dove does not even touch upon politics.
20:49
[SPEAKER_02]: It is simply a story of survival between
20:52
[SPEAKER_02]: young, young older brother and little sister.
20:57
[SPEAKER_02]: It's very grave of the fireflies like for those who know their animation, very little politics involved, but obviously Red Raid would be.
21:05
[SPEAKER_02]: heavily politically charged to be quite honest.
21:09
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know because I don't we have not accepted a film with such obvious and blatant politics before.
21:16
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm speaking without having seen the film for those who don't for those who are wondering.
21:22
[SPEAKER_02]: But I would we would be open to it being submitted.
21:26
[SPEAKER_02]: What it'd be accepted, I can't come out on that.
21:28
[SPEAKER_02]: It would have to come down to film quality, and whether or not we could respectfully show it to the community or not.
21:35
[SPEAKER_02]: That is an open question.
21:37
[SPEAKER_02]: I do encourage them to submit, though.
21:38
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and I think it's a very interesting question.
21:41
[SPEAKER_01]: A fair question, if you think about, we should be able to be discussing this right now.
21:45
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, that's, you know, I think a step forward to recognizing perspectives from the other side, quote unquote, right?
21:57
[SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, I know that your team is very open-minded, but at the same time, we also have to be
22:06
[SPEAKER_01]: uh, very careful about the feelings of people who've lost a lot in their lives as a result of, you know, this war, uh, called the Vietnam War.
22:16
[SPEAKER_01]: And it is something that is still hurting human beings that are living amongst us, you know, our parents, our grandparents.
22:25
[SPEAKER_01]: They're still living in
22:36
[SPEAKER_01]: literally the other side, the other side of who they fought.
22:41
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that again is an open question that if that reality came to be, we would have to discuss it as a team.
22:51
[SPEAKER_02]: I know that there have been, for whatever reason, there have been some propagandistic Chinese films that have made it to Orange County cinemas.
22:59
[SPEAKER_02]: There was a movie a few years ago, go, this is not the correct title, but it's Chinese film, it depicts the battle of Chosen Lake.
23:08
[SPEAKER_02]: For those who do not know, the battle of Chosen Lake was a very important battle during the Korean War.
23:15
[SPEAKER_02]: which the film glamorizes the Chinese Red Army and the North Korean Army, and that somehow got distribution here in America.
23:24
[SPEAKER_02]: So we're got a red rain, that is, they will see.
23:28
[SPEAKER_02]: But I think I wanted to bring this back because I think your original question was regarding the stringer and its connection to on-healing land and how there have been fewer movies regarding the Vietnam War than you thought there would be.
23:43
[SPEAKER_02]: I think the obvious thing, the obvious idea would have been to pair on-healing land and the stringer together.
23:50
[SPEAKER_02]: We were considering that at the end of the day, the programming team and I, which include a fellow from UC Irvine and an intern from New York University, we decided that that was too emotionally heavy, and that both films because of their simple or subject content needed to be separated.
24:07
[SPEAKER_02]: So it was a consideration, but in the end, we didn't go for it.
24:12
[SPEAKER_02]: Regarding the stringer, it's a program to, to, to, it's topic is obviously less about the trauma of the moment.
24:25
[SPEAKER_02]: regarding the authorship of the photo itself, for those of you who have not read about it, it questions whether or not the AP Photo Generalist Nick Oat took the photo known as the Terror War, or commonly known as Naepom Girl.
24:42
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't see the film as
24:46
[SPEAKER_02]: a tirade against Nick.
24:48
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't see it as an invective against the AP.
24:52
[SPEAKER_02]: I see it as an examination of journalistic ethics.
24:55
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think it is very critical of the AP, but it doesn't do so in a way that is reckless, emotional, emotionally charged, or resulting in any ad hominim attacks.
25:08
[SPEAKER_02]: I know that we're making it's West Coast premiered us, and I know that its selection is controversial.
25:13
[SPEAKER_02]: I think there are some other festivals, other regional festivals that cater to Asian-American cinema that decided to avoid this film.
25:23
[SPEAKER_02]: that is my understanding, but we decided that Baos perspective is valuable.
25:29
[SPEAKER_02]: We do not involve and get film vests.
25:32
[SPEAKER_02]: We do not necessarily endorse the findings of the film or the stance that it takes.
25:39
[SPEAKER_02]: What we do endorse though is Baos artistry and the fact that he is able to craft a film that spotlights a perspective
25:50
[SPEAKER_02]: regarding this photo that very few people outside of Jericho, let's take circles of herd of, and that is why we are showing it.
26:00
[SPEAKER_02]: Now more than that, again, we are not endorsing the film's position.
26:03
[SPEAKER_02]: We're just endorsing Dallas Heartistry at the end of the day.
26:07
[SPEAKER_01]: I love what you just said.
26:08
[SPEAKER_01]: I couldn't have said it any better.
26:10
[SPEAKER_01]: I really think that if I could Put that same message out there to anybody who's considering watching the stringer this year You have to listen to what Eric just said.
26:22
[SPEAKER_01]: It's
26:23
[SPEAKER_01]: please audience, you know, and I say this because I have, you know, I've been friends with Nick for a few years and, you know, I'm Facebook friends.
26:35
[SPEAKER_01]: And when this came out to challenge his
26:40
[SPEAKER_01]: authorship.
26:41
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, there's so many people in the AP world that are his friends that rushed out to defend him, which I understand.
26:48
[SPEAKER_01]: I get that emotional side.
26:50
[SPEAKER_01]: But like you said, I think it's the artistry that Balwyn brings to the table where he really kind of
26:57
[SPEAKER_01]: you know, surgically helps us see what this is about.
27:02
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's just not, it's not an attack, right?
27:05
[SPEAKER_01]: There's no personal attacks, there's nothing vicious about it.
27:09
[SPEAKER_01]: It's really just a surgical approach to saying, hey, maybe we should examine this.
27:14
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think this is important because the Vietnamese people are not a monolith.
27:21
[SPEAKER_01]: There are things that have happened in our history,
27:26
[SPEAKER_01]: that happened really, it was a good thing that Nick won that, but at the other side of this, there's another photographer who's Vietnamese who didn't get the credit.
27:36
[SPEAKER_01]: So perhaps we should review the tape, we should look at what was done.
27:43
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that that all the people that are in support of Nick just rushing into how that 100% I got your back Nick, you shot it, you did it.
27:56
[SPEAKER_01]: the film really helps to kind of like move that around a little bit.
28:01
[SPEAKER_02]: I also wanted to comment on Nick very briefly.
28:04
[SPEAKER_02]: I think I think some of his defenders of well as well have cited his work, his humanitarian work.
28:12
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't think that's blighted by this film, whether or not he took the photo, I think what Nick is done as a humanitarian, as an advocate for peace, regardless of his authorship or not, is always be commendable.
28:30
[SPEAKER_02]: there's I have no doubt in my mind about that.
28:32
[SPEAKER_02]: So I just wanted to put that out there.
28:34
[SPEAKER_02]: And here, that's a great point.
28:37
[SPEAKER_01]: This is griffes.
28:38
[SPEAKER_01]: No, you know, whether you shot it or not, you did great in the world and you use that as a platform to promote peace.
28:45
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that's a really wonderful point that you bring out.
28:51
[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, I hope that everybody goes out to see the stringer because it's, you know, one of the most important films of this year.
29:04
[SPEAKER_02]: That was a hand.
29:05
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't it will we're expecting a very turbulent Q&A that evening a motionally Perhaps from folks who may be
29:14
[SPEAKER_02]: a little less open minded as well.
29:17
[SPEAKER_02]: We are preparing for that.
29:19
[SPEAKER_02]: And I hope it is a vigorous Q&A.
29:24
[SPEAKER_02]: I hope that I don't believe Bows filmed to be the most perfect thing in the world.
29:29
[SPEAKER_02]: I think it is of course open to criticism and I hope that people do bring up criticisms at the Q&A.
29:36
[SPEAKER_02]: If they had got them.
29:38
[SPEAKER_02]: So we're inviting everyone who has who's got an open mind
29:45
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I wanted to ask you logistics about the Q&A because there's two theaters.
29:50
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, how does that work for audiences who want to catch the Q&A?
29:54
[SPEAKER_02]: So we're doing something novel this year regarding the Q&A.
29:57
[SPEAKER_02]: We're actually going to ask people in theater to stay put because the Q&A is going to be livestream from theater one.
30:06
[SPEAKER_02]: There will be about a one second audio delay.
30:10
[SPEAKER_02]: but we'll project the events of theater one on to theater two and we will alternate items questions between both theaters.
30:18
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's not as nice as being right there, lied in person in the flesh, but that is something that we are going to be employing this here for this Q&A, for this Q&A alone.
30:30
[SPEAKER_01]: That is fantastic.
30:32
[SPEAKER_01]: What a awesome thing, because normally people from theater two would probably go over to theater one and you would lose a lot of people, but this year having that system, I think it's genius.
30:41
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a wonderful setup.
30:45
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, I wanted to thank my executive team for letting me know that the previous solution was a bit of a fire hazard.
30:53
[SPEAKER_02]: And the free to send what was not necessarily very happy with folks in the aisles for previous Q&A.
31:00
[SPEAKER_02]: So thank you for pushing me on that one.
31:03
[SPEAKER_01]: What other films should we know about?
31:06
[SPEAKER_01]: What other details before we wrap up here?
31:09
[SPEAKER_01]: I should we know about, would you like to talk about?
31:13
[SPEAKER_02]: I think I wanted the point folks to from Saigon to the Ingunfu, which is at the end of Sunday, director May Lay Mung-Hung, is from 1967.
31:22
[SPEAKER_02]: It is from South Vietnam.
31:26
[SPEAKER_02]: And that probably will perk up a few years, I imagine, among the audience.
31:31
[SPEAKER_02]: not a lot of self Vietnamese cinema gets shown in any forum.
31:37
[SPEAKER_02]: And from Saigon to the Indian Food, which starts Q Chen, by the way, it is making its partial restoration from your area with us.
31:45
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, so what do I mean by partial restoration is that missing minutes, it is not missing any minutes.
31:51
[SPEAKER_02]: It is just that the UCLA film and television archive,
31:55
[SPEAKER_02]: has in live and its Eastman color graphics and has put together a print whose video quality is the best we have seen in decades, the restoration though is not quite done.
32:11
[SPEAKER_02]: It could still look better, it could still sound better.
32:14
[SPEAKER_02]: So this is being framed as a fundraiser to help restore the films of mevan studios.
32:21
[SPEAKER_02]: From Saigon to Dien Bin, who is part of a 10-film collection at the UCLA Film and Television Archive from mevan studios.
32:29
[SPEAKER_02]: And it was the grandson of the founders of the studio who donated those films.
32:34
[SPEAKER_02]: Those 10 South Vietnamese films are among the last relics of a cinematic tradition that I do not think
32:43
[SPEAKER_02]: has much left.
32:45
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't think many South Vietnamese films survive, even if they did out in Vietnam, Vietnam does not have the infrastructure to restore them.
32:56
[SPEAKER_02]: The likes of UCLA and some of the
33:02
[SPEAKER_02]: will be again a fundraiser for that.
33:05
[SPEAKER_02]: I also do need to note that for those who are going into that screening, there are some other interesting aspects about it.
33:11
[SPEAKER_02]: We are showing the film with its original subtitles.
33:15
[SPEAKER_02]: For a lot of younger cinephiles like me, we have seen films non-English language films with subtitles that are digitized.
33:23
[SPEAKER_02]: Those of you who watchitarian collection works, those of you who saw, you know, likes of Korean Japanese and French masters and movie theaters over the last few years, you're looking and digitized subtitles.
33:38
[SPEAKER_02]: Have you ever seen burned in subtitles?
33:40
[SPEAKER_02]: Burned onto the print itself?
33:42
[SPEAKER_02]: That's a whole little different thing.
33:44
[SPEAKER_02]: What when you'll see when you see from Saigon to the Indian Food are traditional Chinese subtitles and English subtitles just below that literally burned into the print.
33:55
[SPEAKER_02]: with all of the misspellings involved.
33:56
[SPEAKER_02]: There's a lot of misspellings.
33:58
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I think it adds to the charm of the screening that we're actually seeing that.
34:03
[SPEAKER_02]: And I had never seen them burned in subtitle before I saw from Psychon, the Indian Food.
34:08
[SPEAKER_02]: So I was so glad to see that.
34:11
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, I think one other thing as well that audiences will note is that the actors are speaking, but the audio will sound off.
34:19
[SPEAKER_02]: And what is going on?
34:20
[SPEAKER_02]: Is it UCLA's fault?
34:21
[SPEAKER_02]: What's going on?
34:23
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, again, I invoke classic cinema once more.
34:28
[SPEAKER_02]: For those of you who have seen the likes of the films of the Torio de Sica Federico Fellini, Michelangelo and Tonyoni, these Italian great post-war,
34:41
[SPEAKER_02]: When you look at Italian films postwar, there was a lack of audio technology postwar.
34:48
[SPEAKER_02]: So what they did was that they shot the films, but then they actors all dud their own lines after the shoot in post production.
34:57
[SPEAKER_02]: So when you see the dialogue, it's a little off, and you'll notice the slight,
35:03
[SPEAKER_02]: uh, inaccuracies of, you know, the mouse moving and the audio that you hear.
35:08
[SPEAKER_02]: And for whatever reason, the Italians even after the post-war scarcity ended, they kept doing that through until the 60s, even the 70s.
35:16
[SPEAKER_02]: That is the same deal from from Saigon to Dienven Fu.
35:19
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's not, it's not a shortcoming.
35:23
[SPEAKER_02]: It's just built into the, it's, it's, it's a part of the
35:28
[SPEAKER_02]: You'll also notice that some of these actors are Chinese descent and Vietnamese is coming out of their mouths.
35:34
[SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, it's very Hong Kong Kung Fu cinema in that sense.
35:39
[SPEAKER_02]: But I think it is also following a lot of the norms that you saw.
35:45
[SPEAKER_02]: from international cinema at the time.
35:47
[SPEAKER_02]: And for me, personally, that post-war Italian cinema where dubbing was just post-dubbing was just a thing that persisted decades after, even after they got the technology to record right then and there.
36:02
[SPEAKER_01]: So interesting.
36:04
[SPEAKER_01]: I understand that there is a gala on October 12th at the end of the whole film festival to wrap everything up.
36:14
[SPEAKER_02]: It is, but I think it's a very steep ticket price.
36:17
[SPEAKER_02]: I'd have to look at the price, but essentially that is our award ceremony in which we will be presenting a feature, best short, best actor, best actress, a spotlight award, which we give to a film that, well, either a promising first time on filmmaker and or a film that.
36:39
[SPEAKER_02]: uh... highlights a very important issue to the Vietnamese community but is usually an issue that has been under reported or undercovered so it's either one or both of those that's the spotlight award that's an honorary award not competitive and for the first time ever as competitive award were introducing best cinematography
36:59
[SPEAKER_02]: When I thought about expanding the awards that we give, I thought about, well, what is the most essential part of me making?
37:08
[SPEAKER_02]: And that boiled down to me for two possible categories.
37:12
[SPEAKER_02]: It was either going to be cinematography or it was going to be editing because you can't have
37:18
[SPEAKER_02]: this medium without either.
37:20
[SPEAKER_02]: And at the end of the day, we're a visual storytelling medium.
37:24
[SPEAKER_02]: So best cinematography was our, was our, is our new competitive category this year.
37:30
[SPEAKER_02]: I believe it was given out as an honorary award back in the day to, I don't remember who the cinematographer is, but it went to Victor Vu's blood letter.
37:39
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's cinematography back in the early 2010s.
37:44
[SPEAKER_02]: So that is the first time this is going to be a competitive category from here on out.
37:48
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, so yeah, that's our award ceremony.
37:50
[SPEAKER_02]: The public is invited to attend tickets are, I know they're on the market, expensive side, but it is a good party.
37:57
[SPEAKER_02]: There's a good food, and we also have a silent auction for those of you auction buffs, who are interested in winnings to having.
38:05
[SPEAKER_01]: We have a live auction as well, which I'm running for the evening.
38:09
[SPEAKER_01]: It'll be a fun night, so
38:11
[SPEAKER_01]: I encourage everybody who can partake to buy tickets.
38:16
[SPEAKER_01]: It'll be a fun night, which is October 12th.
38:19
[SPEAKER_01]: Eric, thank you so much for taking the time out to come on to the Vietnamese podcast.
38:23
[SPEAKER_01]: I really appreciate you and your presence and your film knowledge is always so on-game.
38:31
[SPEAKER_01]: What do the young kids say that's unflak, I think, that it is.
38:35
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, I had to think about, I had to think about the brutalist for five seconds, but other than that, I think I got everything down.
38:41
[SPEAKER_01]: You did.
38:41
[SPEAKER_01]: You nailed everything.
38:43
[SPEAKER_01]: And I hope to see you very soon.
38:45
[SPEAKER_01]: There'll be this week.
38:47
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a lot of festivities.
38:49
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'll be seeing you Eric.
38:51
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you so much for coming on the podcast.
38:53
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you, Kenneth.
38:54
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for listening to the Vietnamese with Kenneth Wynne.
38:57
[SPEAKER_00]: Special thanks to Brittany Tran, to Jane Wynne, Catherine Wynne, Tina Fam, Sydney Jamie, and Crystal Tran.
39:04
[SPEAKER_00]: Please find us on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok at the Vietnamese podcast.