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From: Rylan (CET) <rylan@email.arizona.edu>
Date: Sun, Aug 10, 2008 at 8:38 PM
Dear List,
This fall I am teaching a course on visual anthropology for US university
students studying in HCMC. I am hoping to schedule either a panel discussion or
multiple guest lectures involving Vietnamese documentary filmmakers. I am quite
literally starting from scratch, however, and would appreciate any information
on individual filmmakers and institutions that undertake documentary
film/video. My preference is for people located in HCMC, but the group also
travels to Ha Noi, the Mekong Delta, and the Central Region, so suggestions
about people located in any of these areas are welcomed.
Thank you,
Rylan
Vietnam Programs Director
CET Academic Programs
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From: Hue-Tam Ho Tai <hhtai@fas.harvard.edu>
Date: Mon, Aug 11, 2008 at 2:49 PM
I don't know of film-makers who specialize in documentaries. However, a few years ago, the Ford Foundation and a French foundation funded a series of documentaries called "Ten Months Ten Films." Copies may be obtained through the Cinematheque on Hai Ba Trung Street in Hanoi. I don't have the correct information in front of me right now, but it should not be hard to find. Otherwise, contact Mike DiGregorio at the FF.
Hue-Tam Ho Tai
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From: TiTiMary Tran <titimaryt@yahoo.com>
Date: 2008/8/11
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
There is an excellent Viet film maker who did a great documentary called "Spray it, don't say it" or in translation, "Nhu Ca^`u Ve~ Ba^.y" His name is "Tuan Andrew Nguyen." He works and lives in Saigon (HCMC). His documentary was shown at the Vietnamese International Film Festival in 2006 (in Westminster-Irvine-Los Angeles) as well.
Further info: http://apt5.asiapacifictriennial.com/artists/artists/andrew_nguyen
Titi Mary Tran
Vietnamese International Film Festival
Vietnamese American Arts and Letter Association
Guest Relation Chair/Program Coordinator
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From: Lisa Drummond <drummond@yorku.ca>
Date: 2008/8/11
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
"Ten Months Ten Films" is run by TPD Organization. It is a programme to train students in film-making; the students each produce a film, though not a documentary in every case. The main director of the project is the filmmaker Bui Thac Chuyen who is himself a director of both feature films and documentaries. The Cinematheque is currently screening a number of Vietnamese documentaries both from this project and elsewhere.
_______________________________
Lisa Drummond
Associate Professor and Coordinator, Urban Studies
Division of Social Science, Arts
York University
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From: DiGregorio, Michael <M.DiGregorio@fordfound.org>
Date: 2008/8/11
Dear,
Hue Tam and Lisa are correct.
The FF has sponsored a documentary film project through the Central Scientific and Documentary Film Studio for the past 5 years. The program trainers, Andre Van In and Emma Baude, are members of Atelier Varan. AV was established with the support of Jean Rouche and uses direct cinema methodologies. Le Chuong, current director of the Doc Studio and Lai Van Sinh, now head of the Cinema Department, have been very supportive of this project from the start.
Through connections with another project, many of the Varan graduates work through TPD's Cinema Space on Hai Ba Trung Street. TPD's library has all of the Varan documentaries, some of which have won major international prizes.
Two Varan graduates, two of the 10 months graduates, and a one of the Film Studies graduates are working together on a program called "we are the filmmakers." This is an amazing program that trains High School and University students how to use filmmaking equipment and develop scripts to produce shorts docs and features. The Docs from the experimental phase are amazing. Once this program gets off the ground, students will judge each other's films on a peer to peer network, and with support from a group of professionals, select some for broadcast on VTV.
Apart from these sources, the Vietnam Museum of Ethnology is also working in the field of ethnographic films, albeit through an approach that suits their curatorial style: community based films. This program brings a professional ethnographic filmmaker into a community as facilitator. The goal is to work with communities to develop storylines, to film, and to edit the final cut. It's a complicated process made easier with digital projectors and desktop editing software. With the support of American filmmaker Wendy Erd, VME is currently collaborating in developing a methodology with a research institute in Yunnan .
Finally, VICAS is collaborating with Temple University to develop a course in visual anthropology. This course has both theoretical and practical components. Participants have already begun working on films. The organizers hope that they will be able to host a major ethnographic film festival in two years.
Mike
Michael DiGregorio, PhD
Program Officer
Education, Media, Arts, and Culture
The Ford Foundation
Hanoi, Vietnam
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From: DiGregorio, Michael <M.DiGregorio@fordfound.org>
Date: 2008/8/11
To: titimaryt@yahoo.com, Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Tuan also has a fantastic film on a family of a dog meat suppliers in HCMC.
Related Post
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
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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