Below you should find a complete listing of the festival schedule and description of each film. Feel free to contact us at globalfocus@chatham.edu with any questions or comments.
NOVEMBER 11 - 16 CHATHAM UNIVERSITY SHADYSIDE CAMPUS
20111013
Join Us
As part of Chatham University's 2011 2012 Year of Southeast Asia: Vietnam, the Global Focus Program is proud to present the 2011 Vietnam Film Festival. With over a dozen films from both large studios as well as independent documentary filmmakers, with panelists from many diverse backgrounds, this festival is designed to entertain as well as educate our community about the art, the culture, the history and the complexity of modern Vietnam. Please join us. -Lindsey Scherloum Global Focus Vietnam Film Festival Director
Friday Nov 11 7:00pm Eddy Theater
Festival Kickoff at Chatham University's Battle of the Classes
Each of Chatham University's undergraduate classes battle through a gauntlet of challenges. This event is the finale where, among other things, each class takes the stage and competes with songs they have written and choreographed.
7 min / color animation, Vietnam 2010
A Woodpecker falls in love with a Nightingale. A kiss proves problematic. A worm finds shelter from the rain, and an unusual solution is found.
5 min / color animation, Vietnam 2009
The Unknown Rebels is an open project based onindependent creativeness and the use of simple materials to create messages. “Small things can create big ideas.”
6 min/ color video USA 2010
Comedian Dat Phan brings his girlfriend home to meet his family.
Saturday Nov 12 2:00pm Sanger Hall
Apocalypse Now and The Abandoned Field - American and Vietnamese Portrayals of the War lecture by Nguyen Nguyet (60 min)
Nguyet Nguyen is a second-year PhD student in History at American University, Washington, D.C. She completed her MA degree in Communication at the University of Oregon. Her dissertation will examine the role of ordinary Vietnamese people in carrying out diplomatic missions during the second Indochina War largely to isolate the U.S. in the international arena.
Saturday Nov 12 3:00pm Beckwith Hall
Dust of Life (87 min / color film / director Rachid Bouchareb / France, Algeria 1994)
Talkback after screening with film and history scholar Nguyen Nguyet
Shortly after the Fall of Saïgon, internal disruption further destroys North and South Vietnam. Determined to change the Southern population, North Vietnamese Soldiers (Bo Doi) roam the streets picking up orphaned Amerasian boys for transport to rehabilitation camps. Living conditions at these camps are deplorable, especially for Bob, Son and Shrimp who are struggling to survive. They attempt to escape by building a raft and riding the rapids to freedom.
Saturday Nov 12 4:00pm Sanger Hall
Long Biên Picture Show(Films Only) (48 min / color video /Vietnam 2010)
From Hanoi DOCLAB Documentary Filmmaking and Video Art Center
http://www.hanoidoclab.org/
Long Biên is a district in the city of Hà Nội that is home to about 170,000 inhabitants. For the last year, it has also been under intense scrutiny from a group of photographers and filmmakers who tried to capture the district’s everyday (and night) rhythm of life and now their experience is on display. Welcome to Long Biên!
Eyes Open by Tran Thanh Hien
Eyes open, I listen to stories told by the people living beneath the bridge.
Eyes open, I look for the shadows rushing across the bridge into the city.
Eyes closed, I try to remember them.
Hien’s short experimental film is vigorously observational – both pushing the viewer to reconsider the everyday and pulling us into the unfamiliar.
Hard Rails over a Gentle River by Pham Thu Hang
Minh is a bridge guard stationed on the Hanoi side of the Long Bien Bridge. His official responsibility ends halfway across the river at section number 8. But his personal responsibility extends beyond to the lives he and the filmmaker encounter next to the tracks, the people who come to get away or because there’s nowhere else to go.
At Rivers Edge by Do Van Hoang
The quiet island in the middle of the Red River is a place where swimmer's bodies are cooled in the waters rushing by and lives mingle in unexpected ways. A community of men finds a natural place away from the city’s pressures to swim and exercise in the nude, a young couple celebrate an anniversary in a unique way and a woman seeks redemption through the filmmaker’s lens. In Vietnamese with English subtitles.<
The Mouth Gets Wet by Tran Thi Anh Phuong
In the streets beneath the Long Bien train station, in one small intersection, four people labor in small sidewalk businesses to make a daily living. Some leave at sundown, others arrive in the evening to take the vacated patch of sidewalk and set up shop. Each shares a small history both unique and too familiar. And through it all, the trains arrive and the trains leave. In Vietnamese with English subtitles.
Eyes Open by Tran Thanh Hien
Eyes open, I listen to stories told by the people living beneath the bridge.
Eyes open, I look for the shadows rushing across the bridge into the city.
Eyes closed, I try to remember them.
Hien’s short experimental film is vigorously observational – both pushing the viewer to reconsider the everyday and pulling us into the unfamiliar.
Hard Rails over a Gentle River by Pham Thu Hang
Minh is a bridge guard stationed on the Hanoi side of the Long Bien Bridge. His official responsibility ends halfway across the river at section number 8. But his personal responsibility extends beyond to the lives he and the filmmaker encounter next to the tracks, the people who come to get away or because there’s nowhere else to go.
At Rivers Edge by Do Van Hoang
The quiet island in the middle of the Red River is a place where swimmer's bodies are cooled in the waters rushing by and lives mingle in unexpected ways. A community of men finds a natural place away from the city’s pressures to swim and exercise in the nude, a young couple celebrate an anniversary in a unique way and a woman seeks redemption through the filmmaker’s lens. In Vietnamese with English subtitles.<
The Mouth Gets Wet by Tran Thi Anh Phuong
In the streets beneath the Long Bien train station, in one small intersection, four people labor in small sidewalk businesses to make a daily living. Some leave at sundown, others arrive in the evening to take the vacated patch of sidewalk and set up shop. Each shares a small history both unique and too familiar. And through it all, the trains arrive and the trains leave. In Vietnamese with English subtitles.
Saturday Nov 12 4:00pm Eddy Theater
Indochine (153 min / color film / director Regis Wargnier / France 1992) courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics
From the years of French colonial imperialism to the days when American presence made itself feltand the country became known as Vietnam, Indochine is a story of romance and separation told through the backdrop of a country in turmoil. With stunning cinematography of the Vietnamese landscape, this film is not to miss on the big screen.
Saturday Nov 12 6:15pm Eddy Theater
Chronicle of A Tape Recorded Over (28 min / color video / director Nguyen Trinh Thi / Vietnam 2010) courtesy of Hanoi DOCLAB
Using ‘exquisite corpse’, a method by which a collection of stories and images is collectively assembled, Nguyen Trinh Thi began her journey through Vietnam and asked local villagers to contribute their tales, merging reality with fiction in her search for the meaning of collective cultural memory and its relationship to ideas of space and sight.
Nguyen Trinh Thi is a Hanoi-based independent documentary filmmaker and video artist. She studied journalism and photography at the University of Iowa and Southeast Asian studies and ethnographic film at University of California, San Diego. Her documentary and experimental films have been screened at festivals and exhibitions in the USA, Europe, China, Brazil, India, Indonesia, and Cambodia. Festivals include San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival, Vesoul Asian Film Festival, Jean Rouch International Film Festival, Yunnan Multi Culture Visual Festival, and the Vietnamese International Film Festival (ViFF).
In 2009, she founded Hanoi DOCLAB, a center for documentary filmmaking and video art in Hanoi.
Saturday Nov 12 7:00pm Eddy Theater
Festival Reception
Join us for light refreshments as we celebrate film and culture of Vietnam.
Saturday Nov 12 7:30pm Eddy Theater
In Country: A Vietnam Story (60 min/ color film / director Chris Moore / USA 2007) courtesy of WQED
Talkback with filmmaker Chris Moore to follow screening.
In 1971, Chris, Boone and Perry were just three average American guys, serving their country in Vietnam. Though painful and destructive, the conflict would forge a friendship that would always connect them. Then Chris met the Friends of Danang, a humanitarian organization made up of veterans dedicated to helping the sick and poor children of Vietnam's city of Danang. Together, they rediscover a land and a people they never thought they'd see again. Funny, touching and real, "In Country" is a story of hope and healing.
Sunday Nov 13 1:00pm Eddy Theater
Buffalo Boy - director Minh Nguyen-Vo (102 min / color film Vietnam 2004) courtesy of Global Lens Collection and Global Film Initiative
In the haunting watery wilds of Vietnam shortly before North and South were violently parted, this languorous, beautifully shot feature, centers on a teenager, Kim, whose journey from innocence to knowledge is also a twinned meditation on both the natural and very unnatural state of things.
Sunday Nov 13 3:30pm Eddy Theater
The Scent of Green Papaya(104 min / color film / director Tran Anh Hung / France 1993) courtesy of Sony Pictures
Like a poem, The Scent of Green Papaya is a tranquilly beautiful film about a lost Vietnam, a peaceful, orderly place not yet touched by wartime. Told through the story of a young girl, it is so visually seductive and evocative it barely needs dialogue.
Sunday Nov 13 4:00pm Sanger Lecture Hall
All About Dad (82min / color film / director Mark Tran / USA 2009) courtesy of Cinequest
Overbearing dads? Sibling rivalries? These are Vietnamese variations on a series of themes, and they are likely to hit home no matter what culture one grew up in. With the directorial touch of a Wes Anderson with soul, small, quirky details pop to the foreground and take on unexpected significance: a tilting tree, an action figure and the occasional burst of magic.
Sunday Nov 13 6:00pm Eddy Theater
The Vertical Ray of the Sun (112 min / color film / director Tran Anh Hung /France 2000) courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics
Talkback with writer and filmmaker Marc Nieson and Actor and Chef Hal B. Klein
Set in modern Hanoi, Vertical Ray of the Sun follows three sisters (Suong, Khanh and Lien) through their relationships with each other and with the men in their lives. Stunningly photographed, it paints a portrait of Vietnam to the music of noted Vietnamese songwriter Trịnh Công Sơn, as well as The Velvet Underground, Lou Reed, Arab Strap, and The Married Monk.
Marc Nieson's three feature films "Bottom Land," "The Dream Catcher" and "The Speed of Life" have won prizes at numerous international film festivals. His writing has been published in The Iowa Review, The LIterary Review and won teh 2008 Raymond Carver Short Story Contest. He currently teaches fiction and creative non-fiction writing in Chatham's MFA program.
Hal B. Klein has appeared in films such as "Bottle Shock" and "Noble Sun" and has been authoring the food blog This Man's Kitchen for over three years. He has been interviewed about food and film on shows such as Inside Southern California, Hollywood Today and in numerous periodicals. He is currently studying in the Master of Food Studies Program at Chatham University.
Monday Nov 14 7:30pm Woodland Art Gallery - Woodland Hall
Documentary Film Showcase / 2.5 hrs / Vietnam
Selections from the Goethe Institute's Hanoi DOCLab, Ateliers Varan workshops in Vietnam, and the Vietnam Ministry of Culture Best Documentary Collection. Featuring a wide range of subjects, personal narratives, disability infrastructure in Vietnam and new perspectives on Vietnamese Independence.
From Hanoi DOCLab, Film School: (www.hanoidoclab.org/)
Friendgrandma by Pham Mai Phuong - 8 min. 45 sec.
An exploration of family relationships and love over generations through a conversation between a young girl and her grandmother.
The Medium by Cao Trung Vinh, Tran Thanh Hien & Do Yuyen Trang - 13 min
A young man is thought to channel the ancient spirits of the Goddess Mother religion. Through this exploration the film discusses the modernization of religion.
Underneath it All by Do Van Hoang, Nguyen Thi Hong Hanh & Pham Thu Hang - 16 min. 45 sec.
Children garbage and factory workers expose gender dynamics among this segment of the population.
From Ateliers Varan Film Workshops: (www.ateliersvaran.com/)
Roads by Nhung con Duong - 31 min
Tung became blind as a child, a victim of Agent Orange contracted by his father during the war. He is a teacher and musician in the traditional instrument Vietnam: The monotone. It is his grandfather, who takes care of him and accompanies him everywhere in his concerts, which was initiated. Dung is deaf mute. She is still in high school, his parents are worried for her future. She knows what she wants to be: an artist.
Dust / Bui by Nguyen Thi Thuy - 29 min
Once upon a time ... one elderly woman, a boy and a dog. They grow together a cart, wandering around the corners of the city to glean, and do not return when everyone is asleep.
From Vietnam Ministry of Culture Best Documentary Collection:
Story of Kindness by Tran Van Thuy - excerpts - 30 min
A woman with terminal leprosy works at resolving her life relationships while she builds a house for her son before she dies.
Homeland by Sy Chung - excerpts - 30 min
The film addresses the lives and priorities of rural Vietnamese who decide to move to the city.
Tuesday Nov 15 2:15pm Eddy Theater
The Scent of Green Papaya(104 min / color film / director Tran Anh Hung / France 1993)courtesy of Sony Pictures
(in HIS231W Instructor: Dr. Jean-Jacques Sène)
Like a poem, The Scent of Green Papaya is a tranquilly beautiful film about a lost Vietnam, a peaceful, orderly place not yet touched by wartime. Told through the story of a young girl, it is so visually seductive and evocative it barely needs dialogue.
Tuesday Nov 15 6:30pm Sanger Hall
Long Biên Picture Show (Films Only) (48 min / color video / Vietnam 2010)
From Hanoi DOCLAB Documentary Filmmaking and Video Art Center
http://www.hanoidoclab.org/
(with HIS213-01 Special Topics: The Rise of the Third World -Instructor Dr. Jean-Jacques Sène)
Long Biên is a district in the city of Hà Nội that is home to about 170,000 inhabitants. For the last year, it has also been under intense scrutiny from a group of photographers and filmmakers who tried to capture the district’s everyday (and night) rhythm of life and now their experience is on display. Welcome to Long Biên!
Eyes Open by Tran Thanh Hien
Eyes open, I listen to stories told by the people living beneath the bridge.
Eyes open, I look for the shadows rushing across the bridge into the city.
Eyes closed, I try to remember them.
Hien’s short experimental film is vigorously observational – both pushing the viewer to reconsider the everyday and pulling us into the unfamiliar.
Hard Rails over a Gentle River by Pham Thu Hang
Minh is a bridge guard stationed on the Hanoi side of the Long Bien Bridge. His official responsibility ends halfway across the river at section number 8. But his personal responsibility extends beyond to the lives he and the filmmaker encounter next to the tracks, the people who come to get away or because there’s nowhere else to go.
At Rivers Edge by Do Van Hoang
The quiet island in the middle of the Red River is a place where swimmer's bodies are cooled in the waters rushing by and lives mingle in unexpected ways. A community of men finds a natural place away from the city’s pressures to swim and exercise in the nude, a young couple celebrate an anniversary in a unique way and a woman seeks redemption through the filmmaker’s lens. In Vietnamese with English subtitles.<
The Mouth Gets Wet by Tran Thi Anh Phuong
In the streets beneath the Long Bien train station, in one small intersection, four people labor in small sidewalk businesses to make a daily living. Some leave at sundown, others arrive in the evening to take the vacated patch of sidewalk and set up shop. Each shares a small history both unique and too familiar. And through it all, the trains arrive and the trains leave. In Vietnamese with English subtitles.
Eyes Open by Tran Thanh Hien
Eyes open, I listen to stories told by the people living beneath the bridge.
Eyes open, I look for the shadows rushing across the bridge into the city.
Eyes closed, I try to remember them.
Hien’s short experimental film is vigorously observational – both pushing the viewer to reconsider the everyday and pulling us into the unfamiliar.
Hard Rails over a Gentle River by Pham Thu Hang
Minh is a bridge guard stationed on the Hanoi side of the Long Bien Bridge. His official responsibility ends halfway across the river at section number 8. But his personal responsibility extends beyond to the lives he and the filmmaker encounter next to the tracks, the people who come to get away or because there’s nowhere else to go.
At Rivers Edge by Do Van Hoang
The quiet island in the middle of the Red River is a place where swimmer's bodies are cooled in the waters rushing by and lives mingle in unexpected ways. A community of men finds a natural place away from the city’s pressures to swim and exercise in the nude, a young couple celebrate an anniversary in a unique way and a woman seeks redemption through the filmmaker’s lens. In Vietnamese with English subtitles.<
The Mouth Gets Wet by Tran Thi Anh Phuong
In the streets beneath the Long Bien train station, in one small intersection, four people labor in small sidewalk businesses to make a daily living. Some leave at sundown, others arrive in the evening to take the vacated patch of sidewalk and set up shop. Each shares a small history both unique and too familiar. And through it all, the trains arrive and the trains leave. In Vietnamese with English subtitles.
Wednesday Nov 16 6:30pm Eddy Theater
Em Be Ha Noi (The Little Girl from Hanoi) (93 min / black and white film / Vietnam 1975) courtesy of the Vietnam Embassy
A very interesting and moving account of the Vietnam war told from the perspective of a young North Vietnamese girl. This film is an account of the domestic side of Vietnamese life; a fairly happy family, during the bombing of Hanoi. A political movie filmed in wartime North Vietnam it shows a dramatically different perspective and agenda from the story Americans have learned since the 1970s.
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