Source for Clip Used in "Vietnam - A Television History"
From: Molly O'Connell <meh145@columbia.edu>
Date: 2008/9/7
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
List,
I recently worked with documentary filmmaker Nguyen Hoang (from HTV/TFS) on a project on the Central Office of South Vietnam (Trung Uong Cuc).
Hoang had just finished Ky Uc Mau Than, an HTV documentary on the Tet Offensive, and had specifically found a woman whose arrest had been filmed by an American cameraman during the 1968 offensive. Hoang found the clip in Vietnam - A Television History, and located the woman (Nguyen Thi Hien) in Hoc Mon.
Hoang is looking for the original American director/cameraman who filmed Hien's arrest in 1968. I have started looking through the PBS set, but the clips do not have clear sources. With Hoang's permission, I have put a clip of his film up on youtube. If you have any knowledge of newsreels of the period, please take a look and let me know if you know where the original clip might be from.
The url is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzjvX6VEl7Y
Thank you,
Molly Hartman-O'Connell
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From: Nhu Miller <trantnhu@gmail.com>
Date: 2008/9/7
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Could it be the great NBC cameraman Vo Huynh -- who now lives in retirement in LA?
He's the brother of VO (NICK) UT.
I worked with him at NBC in the 1970's. He's the bravest and
cameraman ever who filmed amazing incidents without flinching.
I thought that he was almost indifferent at the time, but now I
realize that he was bearing witness.
T.T.Nhu
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From: David Del Testa <ddeltest@bucknell.edu>
Date: 2008/9/7
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Dear Molly,
I faced a similar situation with a clip from the first episode, of a train with Ho Chi Minh's image on the front advancing through the countryside. The web site offers full transcripts now, and I was able to trace, in my case, the scene through it to the GaumontPathé archives, which had production information. Go to: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/vietnam/series/pt.html and see if the scene is indicate din detail in the transcript.
Best wishes, David
David Del Testa, Ph.D.
Department of History
Bucknell University
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From: Judith Henchy <judithh@u.washington.edu>
Date: 2008/9/8
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Molly,
Did you talk to the Archives at UMass Boston? They have the archival footage that was assembled for the WGBH series. I used to work there and have some recollection that there are extensive indexes of all the footage used, with the original sources of course.
They recently received a grant to make some of those materials more accessible:
Massachusetts
WGBH Educational Foundation - Boston, MA
Award Amount: $709,420; Matching Amount: $709,435
Grant Category: Building Digital Resources
Contact: Ms. Karen Cariani
Director
617-300-4286; karen_cariani@wgbh.org
Project Title: "WGBH Educational Foundation Media Library and Archives, University of Massachusetts/Boston and Columbia University: The Vietnam Digital Library"
The WGBH Educational Foundation Media Library and Archives, in collaboration with the University of Massachusetts/Boston (UMB) and the Columbia University Center for New Media Teaching and Learning (CCNMTL), will create a digital library of material relating to the 1983 series Vietnam: A Television History. Scholars, academics, and the general public will access the original interview materials and stills, and most of the stock footage gathered for the series. Entire interviews will stream online and link to interactive transcripts, allowing users to explore an interview at any point. Online note-taking will enable social networking among worldwide users. The project will be a model partnership among a public television station’s moving image archive, university library staff, and a university digital media center.
Best
Judith