Latest / The Vietnamese with Kenneth Nguyen / 434- Who Are The Vietnamese British? Tuyet Van Huynh

Transcript

434- Who Are The Vietnamese British? Tuyet Van Huynh · The Vietnamese with Kenneth Nguyen

0:00
[SPEAKER_00]: I have Guit Van Hwing today kicking off a Vietnamese film festival in Britain.
0:07
[SPEAKER_00]: It's called Star.
0:08
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, ease.
0:10
[SPEAKER_00]: I am so excited to talk to you about all things Vietnamese British.
0:14
[SPEAKER_00]: We were talking about that shirt.
0:16
[SPEAKER_00]: We were talking about
0:17
[SPEAKER_00]: the way your name is pronounced in Vietnamese in Britain because your tea's so much growing up and it sounds so traumatic the way, you know, because actually what your name, how do you pronounce your name?
0:30
[SPEAKER_00]: I know, obviously it's spelled with it, but I had a suspicion that, you know, it's not the way that you call it yourself.
0:41
[SPEAKER_00]: So let's talk about that.
0:42
[SPEAKER_02]: No, thank you for asking and addressing it because, you know, for years, I'm like, forty-one now.
0:47
[SPEAKER_02]: And after these four years, I've been calling myself two A. And the reason being, because as a child and being the only Vietnamese kid in school, British people couldn't really get around to saying, do it, like with that tongue and that, um, sort of, um, tonality.
1:02
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, and the kids would call me twit, twat, toilet.
1:07
[SPEAKER_02]: And it used to traumatize me, so it just evolved into two A.
1:11
[SPEAKER_02]: And it isn't until very recently where I started to do more work with the Vietnamese community, the Vietnamese diaspora, connecting to my roots that I started to came my name back.
1:21
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's quite nice to hear actually, so thank you.
1:25
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, we couldn't have it in the other way.
1:28
[SPEAKER_00]: But I understand it, though.
1:29
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I get it.
1:30
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I have an American name, Kenneth.
1:33
[SPEAKER_00]: And people asked me, my name was actually spelled very similar to yours except with an end, doing.
1:39
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm ashamed of that name.
1:40
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a girl's name.
1:41
[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, there's so many things that are loaded with meaning into, into our names, right?
1:48
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yep, so much.
1:49
[SPEAKER_02]: I feel like this is a whole podcast to start dissect Vietnamese names and the ownership of how we want to be addressed and how we have been addressed.
1:57
[SPEAKER_02]: But maybe we'll part that for another episode.
2:00
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, there are very few British creatives that I've met in my life and it just feels like there's not a lot of British Vietnamese British people but
2:11
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that you touched on something, you know, when we before we hit record today is there are a lot of Vietnamese people living in Britain, but I think, tell me about the history, like you guys were forcibly dispersed.
2:26
[SPEAKER_02]: Exactly.
2:27
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean, I find it like since I've been curating for this festival, I've been having a lot of connections with people in America.
2:36
[SPEAKER_02]: And what they've said to me is that, oh my gosh, you know, the British fits don't really exist.
2:39
[SPEAKER_02]: And I said, oh my gosh, we do exist.
2:41
[SPEAKER_02]: We've been here for over fifty years, you know, in the late eighties where we came over, um, factual was in role.
2:49
[SPEAKER_02]: And at that time, there was this policy where they would disperse refugees and migrants because they didn't want to have gang culture.
2:57
[SPEAKER_02]: So what happens to Vietnamese community is that they were dotted all over the UK.
3:03
[SPEAKER_02]: So you have some in the midlands in the north, in the south coast, sort of London.
3:07
[SPEAKER_02]: And as you know, the Vietnamese history is so complex.
3:11
[SPEAKER_02]: And you know, the language boundary coming to a different country, that sort of trauma of the war, the ethnic cleansing and the late eighties,
3:19
[SPEAKER_02]: So coming here and being dispersed, it's taken us fifty years to build communities and when we say community that means so many different things in different levels but there wasn't really an artistic community and to build a community comes with trust.
3:35
[SPEAKER_02]: So I think it's only been the last five to ten years that I've seen artistic Vietnamese communities in Britain emerge.
3:46
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I think in Europe there is such an influx of Muslims and people coming from the Middle East and I think that thatcher and that administration through different studies and research probably saw and understood the gang cultures.
4:04
[SPEAKER_00]: It showed up in America.
4:06
[SPEAKER_00]: So I don't particularly blame this sort of, I mean, what do you really know?
4:13
[SPEAKER_00]: How sophisticated can a government really be?
4:15
[SPEAKER_00]: And they just want to sort of protect their citizens.
4:20
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm really just kind of like empathizing with history, but it is really screwed up the way that these communities were not allowed to form.
4:30
[SPEAKER_00]: Because I think in some way it happened with the arrival of Vietnamese Americans, being split up into four camps all across because they didn't want the same thing that happened in Miami with the Cuban
4:42
[SPEAKER_00]: community.
4:43
[SPEAKER_00]: So I kind of understand it and you could see it playing all over Europe today with the conservative movements all over the world now are just trying to keep their own people together and not have all these different people
5:00
[SPEAKER_00]: quote unquote screw.
5:01
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm talking on behalf of like my conservative community in Vietnamese American communities.
5:07
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I understand all of it and empathize with all it.
5:11
[SPEAKER_00]: But I would love to hear your thoughts on that position in Britain.
5:17
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean, like I said, I kind of echo that understanding, like why it happened.
5:23
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think like, I mean, it shocked me.
5:25
[SPEAKER_02]: I only really discovered it in T-thousand-nineteen that that policy existed.
5:30
[SPEAKER_02]: And my first reaction was like, it was kind of angry thinking, why would you do this?
5:34
[SPEAKER_02]: But then living in a country and seeing how the world is unfolding in so many different ways, I get it.
5:41
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think it's like, my sort of outlook and life is that, you know, I don't look at the problems that exist in the past and try to like, you know, campaign against it, because it isn't a past.
5:51
[SPEAKER_02]: So with my work and what I do now, I just try to look at solutions and how to elevate something that should exist.
5:59
[SPEAKER_02]: And it doesn't.
6:00
[SPEAKER_02]: And what different ways can I amplify a community of people who have been, I guess, yeah, dispersed and separated.
6:09
[SPEAKER_00]: the people over at um some agency um i've had uh them on the podcast at one point and um they reached out and talked to me about having you or talking about the festival and posting it on on our socials and i was like thinking about that um
6:28
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, you know, I'm coming here for the film festival because that's my world.
6:33
[SPEAKER_00]: But I knew that when I'm here, there's going to be much more about British Vietnamese culture that I want to explore before we get into the work you do at the film festival.
6:43
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's all coming.
6:44
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to know about
6:47
[SPEAKER_00]: your sort of your journey coming up before you started this film festival.
6:52
[SPEAKER_00]: Like what makes you interested in the arts and are you creative or are you like I know nothing about you and why want the world to know about you.
7:01
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, thank you.
7:02
[SPEAKER_02]: I want the world to know about me too.
7:04
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
7:04
[SPEAKER_00]: The world is more to know about you.
7:08
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, deserves to know two A and do it, but both identities.
7:13
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I feel like my journey has been so long in terms of what Vietnamese means and why I engage with the arts.
7:22
[SPEAKER_02]: And to start from the beginning, I guess a lot of Asian East Asian
7:28
[SPEAKER_02]: self-estation, culture, but you're not really kind of encouraged to work in the arts.
7:34
[SPEAKER_02]: And I know this is something that's like, you know, been said, again, again, but that is my experience.
7:39
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think for the first thirty years of my life, I kind of delved into more traditional sort of occupations like teaching.
7:48
[SPEAKER_02]: And you know, it was a great job.
7:51
[SPEAKER_02]: I got paid well.
7:52
[SPEAKER_02]: I got to travel a little bit, but I was bored as hell.
7:55
[SPEAKER_02]: And when I was growing up, I had a really strict upbringing compared to my sort of westerns of counterparts.
8:02
[SPEAKER_02]: So I was kind of not trapped, but I was indoors quite a lot.
8:06
[SPEAKER_02]: And therefore my escape was TV.
8:10
[SPEAKER_02]: And because I was also addicted to TV, I don't know how this happened, but I was allowed to watch late in high TV.
8:17
[SPEAKER_02]: And in that I watched a lot of American horror from the eighties and nineties Hong Kong horror where I don't know if Americans have heard of this presenting called Jonathan Ross.
8:29
[SPEAKER_02]: So he did this whole midnight series of Hong Kong horror.
8:34
[SPEAKER_02]: that I kind of engaged with.
8:35
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like midnight movies.
8:36
[SPEAKER_02]: You watch after midnight.
8:38
[SPEAKER_02]: So I was up watching that poltergeist, nightmare on Elm Street.
8:42
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think that was just my world.
8:44
[SPEAKER_02]: I was just captivated by this surreal world of horror.
8:50
[SPEAKER_02]: And then that was kind of a part of me for as young as I can remember.
8:53
[SPEAKER_02]: And as I was growing up, film and theatres always been my passion to the point where I did my work experience in theatre for two weeks as a stage manager.
9:03
[SPEAKER_02]: So, yeah, it's jump forward back to being thirteen thing are.
9:06
[SPEAKER_02]: I really hate teaching.
9:07
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm going to quit and just go and throw myself in the deep end and pursue a career in the arts.
9:13
[SPEAKER_02]: So I kind of applied my my school set, which is really strong admin skills and went to loads of different arts organisations.
9:21
[SPEAKER_02]: and finally got a job after three months of rejection, got a job at the National Theatre as a PA and over four years I kind of proved to my superiors that I really wanted to work in events producing and I got promoted as a sister producer, digital producer and producer.
9:38
[SPEAKER_02]: And from there, I was like, wow, this is something I really want to do.
9:42
[SPEAKER_02]: But at the National, as much as I loved them, I felt like it wasn't really factoring in the community that I wanted to work in.
9:50
[SPEAKER_02]: So in two thousand nineteen, I was approached by this amazing woman called Blan Do, who is the only
9:57
[SPEAKER_02]: British Vietnamese actor that I've ever seen in my life and she was on the stage at the National.
10:02
[SPEAKER_02]: So I connected to a French as like, I've got a script, I'd love for you to read it and produce it.
10:08
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was like, oh my gosh, I've never produced like theatre on my own before outside of an institute but I read it.
10:14
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was like, oh my gosh, this is a beast.
10:16
[SPEAKER_02]: This is like the first story that I've connected to in the arts.
10:20
[SPEAKER_02]: And she asked me to produce it, but I was like, I don't have the experience.
10:23
[SPEAKER_02]: I think you should find someone a bit more experienced.
10:26
[SPEAKER_02]: But I'll help you write the funding application.
10:29
[SPEAKER_02]: So I wrote the funding application and I was like, what am I doing?
10:31
[SPEAKER_02]: I need to produce this.
10:32
[SPEAKER_02]: This is brilliant.
10:34
[SPEAKER_02]: And then so from that, I quit my job.
10:37
[SPEAKER_02]: When full time in freelancing for the end to do her play, because it was so beautiful, and I decided to do a full time masters in film programming and curating at the same time.
10:48
[SPEAKER_02]: Because I thought, why not?
10:50
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think in the creative industry to be taken seriously, you need that paper.
10:55
[SPEAKER_02]: You need the qualifications and people take you a little bit more.
11:00
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, seriously.
11:01
[SPEAKER_02]: So anyway, so I produced it and it was the kickstart, actually, of my career in producing work that leaned into the Vietnamese community in Britain.
11:11
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think, as I was producing somewhere else, the place called, I realized that there was a massive stark absence of British Vietnamese voices.
11:21
[SPEAKER_02]: So from there, I kind of focused my career in looking at what was missing and what I love, which is film, theater, and storytelling.
11:30
[SPEAKER_02]: And yeah, that's how I got into it.
11:34
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I want to segue real quick and I don't know if you're doing this in, um, are you in London?
11:40
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
11:41
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, here in LA, here in Los Angeles, we have a tradition that several people throughout the history of the Vietnamese film industry here in LA have picked up mantle and it's been very organic.
11:57
[SPEAKER_00]: It started with Jess Vu.
11:59
[SPEAKER_00]: She started a, oh great.
12:03
[SPEAKER_00]: She started a Facebook page called Viet Entertainment and I bring up all this because I want to inspire other Vietnamese people
12:10
[SPEAKER_00]: throughout the world because you are doing something.
12:14
[SPEAKER_00]: And I just wanted to kind of give the history of like what we do here in LA, because there's a lot of us.
12:20
[SPEAKER_00]: So just food started in entertainment.
12:22
[SPEAKER_00]: And then she started having these mixers.
12:24
[SPEAKER_00]: And then recently another crew of people did the same thing.
12:31
[SPEAKER_00]: Dintai and one ye both film directors here in LA started to put together events.
12:37
[SPEAKER_00]: And they've done like two or three now.
12:40
[SPEAKER_00]: two hundred two hundred fifty people show up to these things and it's just like packed with Vietnamese creatives here in LA and it's everybody from music to film to you know editors to writers I mean we act actors we we all show up and hang out and and it's a blast and I wonder if that is something that you've done or you know
13:02
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean, I absolutely love that.
13:04
[SPEAKER_02]: My heart's beaten fast.
13:05
[SPEAKER_02]: I want to hear about that exciting sort of vibe.
13:07
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think when you mentioned Jess, she was actually one of the the first people I connected back in two thousand nineteen.
13:13
[SPEAKER_02]: And she had this brilliant ideas.
13:15
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, we need to connect all the bits globally and create a directory, which I think we started to do, but she spearheaded it.
13:22
[SPEAKER_02]: And yeah, I mean, I feel like in America, in LA, you guys are like years ahead of us.
13:29
[SPEAKER_02]: And finding your community, the creatives, especially in the film world, is so far more advanced than us in Britain.
13:36
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think what I'm trying to do, and I have started small collectives of Vietnamese creatives.
13:41
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's just a company, a WhatsApp group, where we kind of connect.
13:45
[SPEAKER_02]: We do monthly meet-ups.
13:48
[SPEAKER_02]: But it's still trying to find our feet.
13:50
[SPEAKER_02]: But of course, the ambition is to
13:52
[SPEAKER_02]: elevate that into an and much larger capacity and hopefully collaborate globally because I think you're all deserve it.
14:00
[SPEAKER_00]: That's awesome.
14:01
[SPEAKER_00]: That's awesome here.
14:01
[SPEAKER_00]: And we are all here for you all too.
14:04
[SPEAKER_00]: And I wanna let everybody know.
14:06
[SPEAKER_00]: We're all connected through our Vietnamese roots.
14:09
[SPEAKER_00]: But let me ask you something.
14:10
[SPEAKER_00]: Why is this so important?
14:12
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, obviously I have my own answer for this question for myself personally, but I like to ask this.
14:18
[SPEAKER_00]: Why is it important?
14:19
[SPEAKER_00]: Why is it so important that a British Vietnamese woman, Vietnamese British woman,
14:25
[SPEAKER_00]: like yourself, have to do this community stuff, entertainment stuff for for yourself.
14:33
[SPEAKER_00]: Why?
14:33
[SPEAKER_00]: Why is it important?
14:35
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh my gosh, that is such a loaded question.
14:38
[SPEAKER_02]: I feel like I'm going to answer that in as eloquently and as a singing way as possible because there's so much unpack.
14:44
[SPEAKER_02]: But I think the root of it and I think this is probably like everyone else.
14:50
[SPEAKER_02]: Like I think humans in general are storytellers.
14:53
[SPEAKER_02]: We connect to stories and that's the connection we have with each other.
14:58
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think, you know, my own personal journey is that I've struggled identifying as a Vietnamese person and I'm also part Chinese but I also very much identify as British because I was British born.
15:11
[SPEAKER_02]: And the Vietnamese side of me has always been
15:14
[SPEAKER_02]: I guess suppressed, because again, growing up, people not being able to say my name properly, also when you say your Vietnamese people like what?
15:21
[SPEAKER_02]: As, oh, I'm Chinese.
15:22
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, your Chinese.
15:23
[SPEAKER_02]: So in some inadvertent way, your Vietnamese side is kind of like pushed to the side.
15:28
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's kind of what I grew up in.
15:30
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think, you know,
15:33
[SPEAKER_02]: A lot of people probably from my generation have questions.
15:37
[SPEAKER_02]: They want to ask, you know, our elders, like our parents, our grandparents about their life, their journey.
15:43
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think what I've learned is that I don't have any right to ask my elders to relive that past.
15:52
[SPEAKER_02]: Because of that, it leaves a massive gap for me to try and understand where I come from, you know, that my ancestors, my parents, my grandparents, my aunts and my uncles, children and sisters, and their journey.
16:04
[SPEAKER_02]: So the only way I was able to connect to these stories was the arts.
16:09
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think, you know, we're living in a world where there are multitude of stories and there's no nuance that there's no one way or monolith of Vietnamese sort of diasporas storytelling.
16:17
[SPEAKER_02]: So I found the importance of for myself, discovering that through arts, but also making others feel that they can also reach out and connect to these stories.
16:29
[SPEAKER_02]: And if they're a creative, that they also can see a platform where they can really express themselves.
16:35
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think that is what we've been lacking for so long.
16:39
[SPEAKER_02]: that mirrored to seeing ourselves and being allowed or given that space to say something that means something to us personally or as a collective.
16:48
[SPEAKER_02]: So yeah.
16:50
[SPEAKER_00]: That, I mean, that's basically how I feel about everything, you know?
16:55
[SPEAKER_00]: But I return back to the question that I ask myself, why should Americans or British people give us the space?
17:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Why should they afford us the support of, you know, I saw the British Council or something like that in support of your film festival?
17:15
[SPEAKER_00]: Why do we need to enlist these people to give us a hand?
17:21
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, because we're part of that society.
17:23
[SPEAKER_02]: And I feel like, you know, yeah, there's this Vietnamese side.
17:27
[SPEAKER_02]: There's this British side is an American side, but collectively, we all coexist in one place.
17:32
[SPEAKER_02]: So when it comes to getting support from public sort of funding boards like the British Council, the BFI, the Arts Council, they are very much engaged in, you know, I hate this word, but I'm going to use it because I can't think of anything else at the moment, but diversifying audiences.
17:49
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think, you know, audiences, I think it's the same in LA in terms of cinema.
17:55
[SPEAKER_02]: There is a cinema culture.
17:57
[SPEAKER_02]: And there is so much for people to engage with in terms of stories that are not just based on one side of a coin.
18:05
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think specifically the Vietnamese or stories like we, in Britain especially, we've only
18:13
[SPEAKER_02]: been exposed to the Hollywood canon and the sort of like lens of war through a white male.
18:20
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think now's the time where you know, you're starting to see communities and artistic communities in with Vietnamese heritage in Britain is starting to emerge.
18:28
[SPEAKER_02]: As I was saying, actually, we want to take that space back and we want you to support us because this is something you want to see and we we're not trying to take over a space which is trying to expand people's perceptions.
18:38
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think when I'm writing, because I do all the fundraising myself, when I'm pitching Starnia E's or any other project that is Vietnamese sort of oriented, I generally feel that they do support it because they want that in the sort of cultural discourse.
18:56
[SPEAKER_00]: you have this support of the, or I saw the Vietnamese film institute.
19:02
[SPEAKER_00]: And I don't know anything about the Vietnamese film institute.
19:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Can you tell me about the Vietnamese film institute in Hanoi?
19:09
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
19:10
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh my gosh, I have such a history with the Vietnamese film institute.
19:14
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'd love to tell you more about it.
19:16
[SPEAKER_02]: So in two thousand nineteen when I did my masters in film programming and curating, my thesis was looking at how to unlock Vietnamese cinema mysteries and bring them to the UK.
19:26
[SPEAKER_02]: In that journey, just through Googling, I found the Vietnamese film Institute based in Hanoi and I was very bored and directly emailed them and said, look, I'm just this British Vietnamese person who wants to bring Vietnamese films to the UK because it's never been done before.
19:41
[SPEAKER_02]: So in some essence, I've blacked my way in there.
19:45
[SPEAKER_02]: And you know, it is a government-owned building.
19:49
[SPEAKER_02]: It houses over eighty-eight thousand reals of film, or for the Vietnamese lens.
19:56
[SPEAKER_02]: So you have like tons and tons of like propaganda films, documentaries,
20:03
[SPEAKER_02]: films that have been restored in a classics and I was really excited so I was I didn't I wasn't invited I was going to say I was invited but I was and I I pushed myself into there and they curated a breath of films
20:18
[SPEAKER_02]: that were made by Vietnamese people.
20:20
[SPEAKER_02]: So I was able to sit and watch.
20:22
[SPEAKER_02]: It wasn't like, you know, I was entering a cinema.
20:25
[SPEAKER_02]: I was just sitting in an office with this hard drive with loads of films.
20:29
[SPEAKER_02]: I could select that was already pre curated for me.
20:32
[SPEAKER_02]: And from there, I was like, oh my god, there's something here.
20:35
[SPEAKER_02]: There is something really massive here that no one's really getting to encounter.
20:39
[SPEAKER_02]: And the more I dug into it, I mean, I could literally talk about this for hours, but there was just stories coming out of this institute that I was so amazed by, but I've just thought, I have to bring some of these films to the UK.
20:54
[SPEAKER_02]: And you know, I think the Vietnamese film Institute, it's a complex building because it's stay owned, but it's been, I think they want to see international collaboration.
21:03
[SPEAKER_02]: So where there's restriction, there's also flexibility in working international relationships.
21:10
[SPEAKER_00]: It's crazy.
21:11
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't even know that it existed.
21:12
[SPEAKER_00]: And I feel so guilty for not knowing.
21:15
[SPEAKER_00]: And many times people, I think of myself as a young person turning fifty here this year.
21:22
[SPEAKER_00]: But as a young person, I think that
21:28
[SPEAKER_00]: Vietnam is, you know, I'm imagining other people of my generation who doesn't go back to Vietnam often and we just go back for the food or family.
21:36
[SPEAKER_00]: But we don't think that there are things beside food and natural landscapes, things like the Vietnamese film Institute or there's an archeological institute, Vietnamese archeological institute in Anoi as well.
21:52
[SPEAKER_00]: And these things serve as, I mean, there's an archival
21:56
[SPEAKER_00]: place where you can go in and look at old archival footage and things like that documents.
22:04
[SPEAKER_00]: There are all these things that exist in Vietnam and has been there for probably many decades, right?
22:10
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm so glad that you brought that up today and we might have to
22:16
[SPEAKER_00]: Dedicate, I know you're busy, you're going into this weekend for your film festival, but we might have to like talk about that and expand that because I know that you spent a lot of time in Vietnam and probably poked around the Vietnamese sort of film world in Vietnam.
22:34
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean, I'd love to talk more about it because I feel Vietnam has it is bursting for something like the art scene is growing and in a part of my research for this festival and for myself is not only going to the archives, but meeting filmmakers, independent filmmakers,
22:56
[SPEAKER_02]: and actors and producers.
22:59
[SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, even like the queer-making, like the queer film scene is huge, and I didn't know this.
23:05
[SPEAKER_02]: So my first trick, I only was there for a week, and I met like so many people who were like engaged in what I was doing.
23:12
[SPEAKER_02]: And that kind of birthed this ideas that I came in to bring everything over, all these films, and then I'm my second year, and I'm just so ecstatic that I can find all these levels of stories that exist in Vietnam that has never
23:25
[SPEAKER_02]: ever left for now.
23:28
[SPEAKER_00]: So you started this in twenty twenty four last year.
23:31
[SPEAKER_02]: Twenty nineteen.
23:32
[SPEAKER_00]: Wait, wait, the film festival was started in two thousand nineteen.
23:37
[SPEAKER_02]: So the conception of the film festival, which wasn't coined a stania eighth yet, but it was my thesis for my masters.
23:44
[SPEAKER_02]: So the whole thesis was about unlocking Vietnamese in the mum's trees and that was where my journey began.
23:50
[SPEAKER_02]: And it wasn't you jump forward twenty twenty three.
23:54
[SPEAKER_02]: where I was contacted by a cinema organization called Live Cinema UK, run by two amazing women and they came to me because they co-produced a film called Dustin Metal, which is an archival essay film, looking at the relationship between bicycles
24:16
[SPEAKER_02]: And Vietnam's love for bicycles.
24:20
[SPEAKER_02]: So they approached me and said, look, we've got this film.
24:22
[SPEAKER_02]: We've shown it in Vietnam.
24:24
[SPEAKER_02]: We very much want to show it to British audiences.
24:27
[SPEAKER_02]: But we are too white women.
24:29
[SPEAKER_02]: We don't connect to Vietnamese community.
24:31
[SPEAKER_02]: How do we do this?
24:33
[SPEAKER_02]: and my brain went Bing, Bing, Bing, Bing, okay.
24:35
[SPEAKER_02]: I love this idea.
24:36
[SPEAKER_02]: I want to watch the film first before I agree to anything, but when I watched it, I was like, this is actually a really poetic film.
24:42
[SPEAKER_02]: Even though it's not done by a Vietnamese person, there was a group of Vietnamese creatives that created it.
24:47
[SPEAKER_02]: I was like, if we help you, when I say we, there was another curator, an archive is called Kern Van.
24:54
[SPEAKER_02]: And we said, if we do this, can we do a whole festival and bring my thesis to life?
25:03
[SPEAKER_02]: And they said, yes, of course.
25:05
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's how it happened.
25:06
[SPEAKER_02]: So in twenty twenty three, I collaborate with lives in my UK to co-produce the first Vietnamese one festival in the UK.
25:15
[SPEAKER_00]: So when you say your thesis, what do you mean by that?
25:18
[SPEAKER_00]: Does your master thesis project like, hey, we can have a film festival in Britain?
25:23
[SPEAKER_00]: Is that like what's the thesis?
25:26
[SPEAKER_02]: That's pretty much it.
25:29
[SPEAKER_02]: My masters was in film programming and curating at Birkbeck.
25:33
[SPEAKER_02]: And as most masters, you have your final project.
25:38
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's got to be around curating and programming.
25:41
[SPEAKER_02]: And my idea was like, yeah, I'm just going to curate how do I curate and what does curation mean in this context, taking Vietnamese films and putting it in front of a British audience.
25:52
[SPEAKER_02]: So I did a lot of academics or research and readings to position this for the late years, which I didn't know it was going to come to life.
26:01
[SPEAKER_02]: Obviously in my heart, it would be great if I could do this.
26:04
[SPEAKER_02]: And my master's supervisor, when she read it, she was like, you should do a PhD and do this.
26:08
[SPEAKER_02]: I was like, I'm a real-life producer, so I'm just going to do it.
26:12
[SPEAKER_02]: So instead of a PhD, I just did it.
26:16
[SPEAKER_00]: You remind me of a different mind shout out to my partner.
26:20
[SPEAKER_00]: I have a few partners at East Films.
26:23
[SPEAKER_00]: Anderson Lay is deeply, deeply involved in Hawaii International Film Festival for the last two decades, and he's programmed and he flies to can.
26:35
[SPEAKER_00]: Busan and, you know, a Sundance and he's at all the film festivals picking up titles and security.
26:41
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I think we talked about this one time, Anderson's watch, he watches probably seven hundred films a year.
26:48
[SPEAKER_02]: Love him, love him already.
26:50
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, it's insane.
26:52
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, we'll put you in contact with Anderson Lee one day soon.
26:58
[SPEAKER_00]: I think you guys have a lot of overlap.
27:02
[SPEAKER_00]: What tell me, when you have an idea for film festival in Britain, how do you make and manifest it to come to life?
27:11
[SPEAKER_00]: Like what are the things that you have to do?
27:14
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh my gosh, there's a lot of things to do.
27:17
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, the first step always is money.
27:19
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think, because obviously the idea, but the idea already existed, but in order for us to bring something together is finding money that, like, funding boards that will bring it to life.
27:33
[SPEAKER_02]: And then venues, venues to support us because obviously there's a lot of incline costs.
27:39
[SPEAKER_02]: putting like these films in their buildings.
27:42
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm building a team of people who are just excellent at what they do.
27:46
[SPEAKER_02]: For this particular one, I really wanted to have as many bits in the creative team as possible, which I've accomplished, I think, really well this year.
27:55
[SPEAKER_02]: But yeah, it's all about money, buildings, and then creative, the whole thing together.
28:02
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
28:03
[SPEAKER_01]: So money, space, and then people.
28:07
[SPEAKER_02]: You know what I, you could produce an investment now?
28:09
[SPEAKER_00]: Simplified, yeah.
28:12
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, there's the fit film festival here in Littersegon, uh, ran by Islea, also another lay.
28:20
[SPEAKER_00]: Islea and Anderson lay.
28:21
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, that's been going on since two thousand four maybe.
28:26
[SPEAKER_00]: She's been at it for over twenty years as well.
28:28
[SPEAKER_00]: And, and that's the pride the biggest film festival.
28:31
[SPEAKER_00]: I think of the Vietnamese community worldwide.
28:34
[SPEAKER_02]: I've been wanting to attend, but I've never been able to get a flight to LA to come, but one day I will.
28:40
[SPEAKER_02]: Someone out there please, please one week.
28:43
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I'm so happy that you're doing the work that you do.
28:48
[SPEAKER_00]: Now tell me this year about the program.
28:54
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, so this here is to give it a bit of context, like the first year was introducing like UK audience to fit in the cinema, so we curated three war films from the Vietnamese land and then contemporary documentary and some shorts.
29:12
[SPEAKER_02]: This year, when I did my research in Vietnam, I was there for two months, which was the best two months of my life, by the pollution.
29:18
[SPEAKER_02]: And I kind of wanted to move away from born narratives, and I wanted to know what existed.
29:23
[SPEAKER_02]: So I kind of developed some funding to work with Vietnamese curators in Vietnam.
29:29
[SPEAKER_02]: And it was actually the Vietnamese curators that I kind of worked shocked with, that they brought to me the Doi May era, which is the renovation period.
29:36
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was like, wow, okay, what's this?
29:38
[SPEAKER_02]: So we kind of looked at massive film directories from the Institute, and we discovered so many films, I spoke to journalists, film critics about their love for the Doimea era, what that meant for cinema, and then someone said, Instant noodle film, I was like, oh my gosh, what's that?
29:54
[SPEAKER_02]: An Instant noodle film was like a period from the nineteen nineties to nineteen ninety four.
29:58
[SPEAKER_02]: where there was just like fast-paced, low budget, same actors, same day, pumping out all of these films about love, friendship, and music.
30:07
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was like, oh my god, what is this?
30:10
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm getting goosebumps just talking about it, but ended up watching loads.
30:14
[SPEAKER_02]: I think I watched like about a hundred and fifty films in two months.
30:18
[SPEAKER_02]: I was just in watching, it was just endless.
30:20
[SPEAKER_02]: I was in my Airbnb watching, watching, watching.
30:22
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was like, oh, the Dooma era, okay, this is about reimagination, re-invention, joy, rebellion.
30:29
[SPEAKER_02]: So from all these films and with the Vietnamese curators, we found some hidden gems that had never been going before.
30:37
[SPEAKER_02]: So we went to archive, we watched it.
30:40
[SPEAKER_02]: And then we kind of curated, you know, all the films that I watched into a watch list of about thirty to fifty films, brought that back to the UK, put a call out for British Vietnamese curators and E.C.
30:54
[SPEAKER_02]: curators who want to curate for a film festival, workshop to them.
30:59
[SPEAKER_02]: And they watched the films, we talked about it, and then developed the program.
31:03
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's more than a film festival.
31:05
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a cultural event.
31:06
[SPEAKER_02]: So we invited Vietnamese musicians, British Vietnamese musicians, poets, illustrators to develop an art exhibition, which reimagines the film posters from the films that we'd programmed.
31:21
[SPEAKER_02]: Musicians to respond to the films, and poets to respond to some of the films as well.
31:28
[SPEAKER_00]: I got a thousand questions in my mind right now.
31:31
[SPEAKER_00]: It's crazy.
31:31
[SPEAKER_02]: I feel like I keep talking about them.
31:34
[SPEAKER_02]: Stop just a breathe.
31:34
[SPEAKER_02]: I see you can ask me the questions.
31:37
[SPEAKER_00]: This is when you know you have a lot to talk about.
31:40
[SPEAKER_00]: So I got to put the questions out before I forget.
31:43
[SPEAKER_00]: So the first question is last year when you did the war movies, these are war movies from inside of Vietnam, right?
31:50
[SPEAKER_00]: So there's a perspective that could be challenging to the people who love Vietnam, the diaspora.
31:56
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's the first question.
31:57
[SPEAKER_00]: Did you have any pushback or challenges in your community about that?
32:03
[SPEAKER_00]: The second question I have is
32:08
[SPEAKER_00]: when you go out and you get like a batch of a hundred fifty of these knowing my films can you like you have to go to a hundred fifty different production companies who is giving you a hundred fifty keys to this thing and I asked that because
32:26
[SPEAKER_00]: with the hundred-fifty films, isn't there any way where you go, I'll take all of them and I'll stream them for like a week or two weeks through my portal here in Britain so the rest of the world can see what you're seeing so you could share it with, is that a possibility?
32:42
[SPEAKER_00]: Those two questions are right.
32:43
[SPEAKER_02]: I love your two questions.
32:44
[SPEAKER_02]: I have so much, you're gonna come up with like ten million more questions.
32:48
[SPEAKER_02]: So the first question was about the, I guess, the clapback from the curation of the war films.
32:55
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, so it was a complex season because it was an introduction to Vietnamese cinema and
33:01
[SPEAKER_02]: you know, how on earth do you introduce a nations of work in just three to four features and the shorts?
33:10
[SPEAKER_02]: So the complications run and anyone Vietnamese would know this is like the complexities between the north and the south.
33:17
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think you know, a lot of my research was stood to the northern side.
33:22
[SPEAKER_02]: One coming from like my heritage is northern and the archive also sits in in and in her noise.
33:29
[SPEAKER_02]: Everything I was exposed to was very northern.
33:32
[SPEAKER_02]: Thus, the curation was a lot of northern films.
33:36
[SPEAKER_02]: So when we brought them back, there was a lot of, you know,
33:42
[SPEAKER_02]: People, especially the elders in the community, did not want to come because they felt like it wasn't their stories.
33:47
[SPEAKER_02]: And it was too steered towards northern side.
33:49
[SPEAKER_02]: And then we had the second generation, third generation seeing that, but also enjoying it because they'd never seen anything quite like it.
33:57
[SPEAKER_02]: So it was complex, but we did take that on board and push that into the next season where we were considering watching as many films from all sides of it now.
34:07
[SPEAKER_02]: It's not just north and south, but it's the countryside, the Midlands, all of it.
34:11
[SPEAKER_02]: So that was that was hard to experience, but I think with a country like Vietnam, you're always going to have to, I guess be prepared for anyone to say something negative or you haven't considered this, which is totally understandable.
34:26
[SPEAKER_02]: But like I said, solve problems and try to work your way for it.
34:30
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, progress, there is no like a picketing or anything like that.
34:34
[SPEAKER_00]: No violence.
34:36
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh my, you know, you do that in our community of Sagan and Orange County.
34:40
[SPEAKER_00]: You're going to have like death threats.
34:41
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
34:42
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's yeah.
34:43
[SPEAKER_00]: You can't just drink Northern propaganda and Northern war films into the community, which is beautiful that you could do it, you know, because, hey, you don't get the push for or the clap back is not as intense.
34:56
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that's, you know, being able to see
35:00
[SPEAKER_00]: The other side's perspective is so important for us.
35:04
[SPEAKER_00]: Why not?
35:06
[SPEAKER_02]: That's crazy to hear, but I think I kind of understand it.
35:11
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think I still don't know that much about the sort of Americans or Vietnamese community and in LA.
35:16
[SPEAKER_02]: I know just a little bit, but I feel, yeah, maybe we're really lucky we haven't got to that stage where those opinions would accelerate into something a little bit more severe.
35:27
[SPEAKER_02]: But, you know,
35:29
[SPEAKER_02]: some of the conversations weren't pretty but then there was some that was just like it was a learning curve and I think in this day and age we are all just learning from each other no one can know every single thing and to represent something it's difficult because you're not saying this is all the stories and that's it and it's one story it's it's just a taste of it so it was a big learning curve for me for sure
35:50
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think, you know, something good comes out of dispersing the community that that you did.
35:57
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, okay, so you can't get strengthened numbers that go in protest.
36:02
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, because you have a certain assimilation if you're ever really spread out.
36:07
[SPEAKER_00]: And so nobody's like violently together the way
36:11
[SPEAKER_00]: Miami is, or the way Orange County is here in the communities that when you have over hundreds of thousands of of the same people in a strange country, you know, in America, and they're doing things that are like, okay, we have strength in numbers.
36:27
[SPEAKER_00]: So there's like some blessing and a curse at the same time.
36:31
[SPEAKER_02]: God, I love this conversation with you.
36:33
[SPEAKER_02]: I feel like there's so many things.
36:34
[SPEAKER_02]: We could literally have a glass of wine and just keep going on different tangents.
36:38
[SPEAKER_02]: But I really want to continue this part of the conversation enough time.
36:42
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
36:43
[SPEAKER_00]: So let's go back to the hundred fifty that you watched.
36:47
[SPEAKER_00]: How can we all like to access that?
36:50
[SPEAKER_00]: Because that sounds so interesting to me.
36:53
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't even know that that's a genre.
36:59
[SPEAKER_02]: I didn't know until I, well actually I did know because I wrote it in my thesis, but I didn't know until I, you know, went to Vietnam and spoke about it.
37:06
[SPEAKER_02]: So the magical thing is that I absolutely understand my position and privilege that I've had to be exposed to, you know, people in the film world in Vietnam visiting the institute that not many people have gone to.
37:23
[SPEAKER_02]: being connected in the way, basically living a life of blacking in the Vietnamese or film world.
37:29
[SPEAKER_02]: So I, I mean, it wasn't an easy feat.
37:32
[SPEAKER_02]: It sounds like I did a lot and I did, but that's only because I persevered and asked all the right questions and pushed as much as I could.
37:39
[SPEAKER_02]: But you know, every bit of information I've got has been so
37:44
[SPEAKER_02]: fractured like I've had to work things out myself.
37:47
[SPEAKER_02]: I've had to push through conversations, you know, also my Vietnamese is terrible.
37:52
[SPEAKER_02]: I can understand it well, but I can't speak it.
37:54
[SPEAKER_02]: So there's that language boundaries.
37:55
[SPEAKER_02]: So I thought, okay, if I were to jump back to two thousand nineteen when I was doing this and having all these issues, how could I make it better for myself?
38:04
[SPEAKER_02]: So what I've done is part of the funding is to build an ongoing digital archive of all my research.
38:11
[SPEAKER_02]: So I'm currently building a website that captures, obviously, the festival itself and the past programmes, the films, the synopsis, because I don't know if you've done research on old Vietnamese films, the synopsis are so badly translated.
38:26
[SPEAKER_02]: You're like, what is this film about?
38:28
[SPEAKER_02]: So what I'm doing is building a comprehensive digital archive-stroke website where it will place all my research along with interviews that I've had that I've recorded in Vietnamese, getting them translated.
38:44
[SPEAKER_02]: So there'll be accessible where I'll have a transcript in English, in Vietnamese, audio, all the films I've seen, I'm building
38:55
[SPEAKER_02]: or the sort of like a Vietnamese IMDB on this archive, you know, who wrote it?
39:00
[SPEAKER_02]: When was it made?
39:00
[SPEAKER_02]: What's it about a fun quote about it?
39:03
[SPEAKER_02]: And then I've done a paid review on like how I access the film where I access the film and can this person who ever was reading it watch it as well.
39:13
[SPEAKER_02]: And another thing to note is I don't know if you know this, but because the lack of accessibility to Vietnamese films, someone somewhere has uploaded as many Vietnamese films onto YouTube,
39:26
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's kind of like there, but they look, they've uploaded it where?
39:32
[SPEAKER_02]: You too.
39:34
[SPEAKER_00]: There's somebody there.
39:36
[SPEAKER_02]: Maybe many people, but there's this whole scene which I discovered in Vietnamese cinema that lives on YouTube.
39:43
[SPEAKER_02]: However, it's very low res.
39:46
[SPEAKER_02]: The sound is choppy, but it's the only way people can access Vietnamese films.
39:52
[SPEAKER_02]: And I thought, okay, you can watch it, but you're not really getting that experience.
39:58
[SPEAKER_02]: A lot of it exists and the rights is in the Vietnamese film Institute, which is hard to get rights.
40:05
[SPEAKER_02]: But you can watch them online.
40:07
[SPEAKER_02]: And all the other films I've discovered, there are independent distributors, which you can contact directly, which I'll also put on to archive so that you can find these gems that I've set with.
40:19
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, but who has time to reach out to each one of these production companies or distribution company, right?
40:24
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I do job, right?
40:28
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's I wish all of it was centralized like a Netflix of all these films that would be amazing.
40:35
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, maybe one day, maybe I'll make like a Vietnamese movie in some ways.
40:40
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, that's the right.
40:42
[SPEAKER_02]: But it's going to be hard.
40:45
[SPEAKER_00]: So you kick off the film festival tomorrow.
40:48
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
40:50
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
40:50
[SPEAKER_00]: And how many people do you expect to come?
40:53
[SPEAKER_02]: So we have multiple screenings.
40:56
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, are opening tomorrow the capacity in the cinemas, a hundred and eighty.
41:00
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, we're almost sold out, which is amazing.
41:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
41:06
[SPEAKER_00]: It really is, um, God.
41:08
[SPEAKER_00]: It is such a good news to hear that.
41:09
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, and then people, people walk in, right?
41:13
[SPEAKER_00]: It's exhilarating to hear about them.
41:15
[SPEAKER_02]: It's, I mean, it's been nerve-racking just watching the box off their cells reports come to my email and I was like, oh my gosh, Vanessa, all ten tickets.
41:22
[SPEAKER_02]: The next day it's like fifty.
41:24
[SPEAKER_02]: But our social media game has been hot this year and I think because we are a whole narrative is gloomy and it's like no one's even heard of it before, so like what what is this?
41:35
[SPEAKER_02]: And we already built rap from last year.
41:37
[SPEAKER_02]: It was small, but there's rap.
41:39
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think it kind of shows that there's a hunger for this, which is really, it feels good that people want this.
41:46
[SPEAKER_02]: It's not just my own personal journey.
41:49
[SPEAKER_02]: But everyone wants a bit of it.
41:51
[SPEAKER_00]: You know what I'm excited to hear about is these Vietnamese British people who are like around our age in their forties and fifties who predominantly probably feel ashamed about being Vietnamese all these years, all these decades.
42:07
[SPEAKER_00]: And then all of a sudden having an awakening and having a place for the next few years to congregate and to consume Vietnamese films because it's so important to be a part of that community.
42:22
[SPEAKER_02]: Absolutely.
42:23
[SPEAKER_02]: I think what you just said there's so beautiful and I think that's kind of like rooted in why I do what I do is that it's just so much more than just yeah I'm doing an arts project it's it's to start conversations in the community that has never had that space to and you know like even know what we are leading with films like
42:45
[SPEAKER_02]: to commission Vietnamese British Vietnamese artists and illustrators to exhibit work in a public art space and get paid to do that.
42:55
[SPEAKER_02]: And then we're like showcasing a British Vietnamese DJ and producer who specializes in UK drill and Grime, who's going to respond to the whole season for tomorrow as well.
43:06
[SPEAKER_02]: And he's still very much
43:09
[SPEAKER_02]: you know, finding his identity journey and he was like, projects like this really makes me feel like I'm doing something for myself.
43:16
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's just amazing, but I just feel very, very, I don't know, good about it.
43:24
[SPEAKER_00]: I can't wait till this gets bigger and bigger and bigger and I can actually go to this one day because it sounds so fun and I really can't wait to meet all the people who show up to these film festivals because they're really cool people.
43:41
[SPEAKER_00]: Who do you
43:44
[SPEAKER_00]: Who do you think of when you think of Vietnamese British creatives?
43:49
[SPEAKER_00]: Who are some names?
43:50
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't dare.
43:51
[SPEAKER_00]: I dare not say who do you like look up to or respect or worship.
43:58
[SPEAKER_00]: But who are the people that you really think about?
44:02
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, that's such a gorgeous question.
44:04
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm going to list out everyone I love and have respect for and everyone who should, he's listening to this should follow them because their work's just brilliant.
44:11
[SPEAKER_00]: And then you're just going to send me the spreadsheet so I can invite them onto the park.
44:16
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, please.
44:17
[SPEAKER_02]: You need to, honestly, that they are such humble beings and they're so talented.
44:22
[SPEAKER_02]: So, OK, so you've got an hour.
44:24
[SPEAKER_02]: So, William though, who wrote some roles, which is the first place.
44:28
[SPEAKER_02]: So she's actor writer all round amazing human.
44:33
[SPEAKER_02]: Zoe Pam, who was born in Vietnam, but she lives in the UK.
44:37
[SPEAKER_02]: She is an illustrator.
44:38
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm going to have to give you her Instagram Handbook.
44:41
[SPEAKER_02]: She reimagined some of the posters.
44:43
[SPEAKER_00]: Give it to me now.
44:43
[SPEAKER_00]: Have you got your smile on?
44:47
[SPEAKER_02]: You have to look at her work.
44:48
[SPEAKER_00]: Zoe Pam.
44:49
[SPEAKER_02]: Zoe, but her Instagram Handles not Zoe.
44:54
[SPEAKER_02]: She's going to cry when I tell her this.
44:58
[SPEAKER_00]: We have to shout out, we have to shout out Vietnamese creatives, because this is what we do.
45:03
[SPEAKER_02]: This is a sweet, sweet blog.
45:06
[SPEAKER_02]: And we love it.
45:07
[SPEAKER_02]: So her Instagram handle is flowers graveyard.
45:13
[SPEAKER_00]: Awesome.
45:13
[SPEAKER_02]: So her work is fantastic.
45:16
[SPEAKER_02]: There's her an amazing illustrator who she actually came on board of the festival as a community ambassador for London.
45:23
[SPEAKER_02]: So what the budget is that, you know, because we want to engage community, I've given her a designated job to go speak to community groups to bring them to the cinema because they still have to trust the process of coming into a space that we've been invited to.
45:36
[SPEAKER_02]: Anyway, and then I discovered that she's an illustrator, so I was like, okay, you've got to reimagine the bit of taste of love and the short program.
45:42
[SPEAKER_02]: So she's done that.
45:43
[SPEAKER_02]: Tan Tran, who's also an illustrator.
45:47
[SPEAKER_02]: He's also Vietnamese born, but brought up in the UK.
45:52
[SPEAKER_02]: His work is brilliant.
45:52
[SPEAKER_02]: He reimagine children of the mist.
45:56
[SPEAKER_02]: Nancy Natlu, so she's a community ambassador, all around great person, delved into marketing.
46:04
[SPEAKER_02]: She's probably one of the most brilliant people that I've met today.
46:06
[SPEAKER_02]: She's so much fun, so much joy, so, so inclusive.
46:11
[SPEAKER_02]: Nancy, I'm not on Nancy.
46:15
[SPEAKER_02]: Vietnamese, Grimes, and UK drill DJs performing tomorrow.
46:19
[SPEAKER_02]: Jambo, who's British Vietnamese Chinese, who is a rapper, and he were premiering his music video tomorrow before the screening.
46:28
[SPEAKER_02]: Jambo is a dude.
46:31
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm telling you, I...
46:33
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm going to say this publicly, up totally in love with him.
46:35
[SPEAKER_02]: I think he's brilliant, talented.
46:37
[SPEAKER_02]: His voice is just to die for, you've got to listen to him.
46:40
[SPEAKER_02]: Natalie Limboldtiston, who's an award winning poet, so she's mixed Vietnamese and Scals, just the northern side of Britain.
46:52
[SPEAKER_02]: Because I'm getting excited.
46:53
[SPEAKER_02]: Daniel Fung, who's a dancer and actor, also very close to my heart.
46:59
[SPEAKER_02]: Who else?
47:00
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh my gosh.
47:00
[SPEAKER_02]: Now for the pressure that she's, yeah, I mean,
47:03
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, keep going.
47:04
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, there's a woman I forget her name.
47:06
[SPEAKER_00]: She does set production for stages.
47:08
[SPEAKER_00]: I forget her name.
47:10
[SPEAKER_02]: Is it Moitran?
47:11
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yes, Moitran.
47:13
[SPEAKER_00]: That's right.
47:13
[SPEAKER_02]: Of course.
47:14
[SPEAKER_02]: Can I forget Moitran?
47:15
[SPEAKER_02]: She is so brilliant as well.
47:17
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, and Loy, um, Loy, who did the graphic design and branding for Stanya ease.
47:22
[SPEAKER_02]: He's currently in Taiwan, but lives in, um, Saigon, but he's British born Vietnamese, gorgeous human.
47:29
[SPEAKER_02]: If you have any of the graphic designer or branding person, he's the one.
47:34
[SPEAKER_00]: How did you come up with the name Starnia Ease?
48:04
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, speaks really good Vietnamese.
48:06
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, like, oh, this is code switching that, you know, we do British, English Vietnamese.
48:12
[SPEAKER_02]: And we started to talk about a title that needs to resonate with Vietnamese people and British people.
48:17
[SPEAKER_02]: So we kind of played around with the words and we thought about star, which is kind of like, you know, you think about light on screen, performance projection, but also a guiding light for people who have left Vietnam.
48:30
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, means home in Vietnamese.
48:33
[SPEAKER_02]: So that kind of resembled the start of anise.
48:36
[SPEAKER_02]: We can put the word home.
48:38
[SPEAKER_02]: People moving out of it now, trying to find a place to settle, finding a home.
48:43
[SPEAKER_02]: And anise is that kind of end a bit of anise.
48:48
[SPEAKER_02]: And we thought, oh, that could be the emotional state where people have settled, people are reflecting, people are finding a place where they can be at home.
48:56
[SPEAKER_02]: So that's kind of how the title came.
48:59
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a beautiful explanation of the title.
49:02
[SPEAKER_02]: I felt like I botched that up.
49:04
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, you got a perfectly nailed it.
49:06
[SPEAKER_00]: And I thought about that when I first saw the program, Starnais, it sounded exactly like Star Ennis, the urban we used in Fa.
49:17
[SPEAKER_02]: Exactly.
49:17
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think, you know, one of the things that we wanted is to build something that's really familiar.
49:22
[SPEAKER_02]: And yes, you know, when you think of Vietnam, you think of food, you think of far.
49:26
[SPEAKER_02]: But we're not going to deny that.
49:27
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, you know, it's such a beautiful dish.
49:30
[SPEAKER_02]: We all love it.
49:31
[SPEAKER_02]: And the star needs it is pitiful in the Vietnamese sort of culture and cuisine.
49:38
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you so much for coming on to the podcast today.
49:41
[SPEAKER_00]: Is there any parting thoughts that you have?
49:45
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, just a massive thank you for taking the space to tweet to me to hear about your about this.
49:51
[SPEAKER_02]: It was about and I guess for everyone who's listening, just support us.
49:55
[SPEAKER_02]: Just follow us.
49:56
[SPEAKER_02]: Come to it if you can and hopefully I'll bring it abroad.
50:00
[SPEAKER_02]: I'll bring it to LA.
50:01
[SPEAKER_02]: He's more people can experience it.
50:03
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, yeah.
50:04
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you.
50:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
50:06
[SPEAKER_00]: I look forward to meeting you one day because this is amazing what you're doing.
50:09
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you.
50:10
[SPEAKER_02]: And you're amazing in having these conversations.
50:13
[SPEAKER_02]: So thank you for being here.
50:15
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you to it.
50:16
[SPEAKER_01]: We'll talk to you soon.
50:18
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, thank you.
50:19
[SPEAKER_02]: Have good day.
50:20
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for listening to the Vietnamese with Kenneth Wyn.
50:23
[SPEAKER_01]: Special thanks to Brittany Tran, to Jane Wyn, Catherine Wyn, Tina Fam, Sydney Jamie, and Crystal Tran.
50:30
[SPEAKER_01]: Please find us on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok at the Vietnamese podcast.