Event showcases Vietnamese films
By Daily Bruin Staff
April 18, 2002 9:00 p.m.
UCLA Vietnamese Language and Culture In "Chances Are," a
romantic comedy, a Vietnamese-American (Van Son,
left) falls in love with a local Vietnamese teacher (Thanh
Truc).
By Mary Dang
Daily Bruin Contributor
With the financial and critical success of “Crouching
Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” a bonanza of foreign films has cropped
up, trying to reach that same plateau. As the flourishing foreign
film industry is receiving more and more attention, it seems
fitting that UCLA should join the enterprise by offering a look
inside Vietnamese cinema through “Cinema Symposium: In Front
of and Behind the Lens.”
As a joint project between Vietnamese American Arts and Letters
Association and UCLA’s Vietnamese Language and Culture,
“Cinema Symposium” will be presented on Sunday, April
21 at 3 p.m. at Ackerman Grand Ballroom.
“Cinema Symposium” will showcase nine panelists:
Kieu Chinh (“Joy Luck Club” actor), Timothy Linh Bui
(“Green Dragon” director), Charlie Nguyen
(“Chances Are” director), Nguyen-Bo Nghiem-Minh
(“Crimson Wing” director), Victor Vu
(“Firecracker” director), Katie Luong (“Green
Dragon” actor), Thanh Truc (“Chances Are” actor),
Billinger Tran (“Green Dragon” actor) and Lam Nguyen (A
Line Production overseer).
After showing some film clips, these panelists will talk about
their films and answer audience questions. The event is described
as a convention for Vietnamese Americans who want to learn how to
get inside the entertainment industry.
“It’s a conference, a gathering of directors, actors
and actress together to share their experience and their knowledge
in film-making and how they broke those barriers as Vietnamese
Americans because not a lot of Asian Americans or Vietnamese
Americans pursue the film industry,” said Khoa Nguyen,
fourth-year psychobiology student and co-director of VNLC.
By presenting the first among the few Vietnamese Americans who
have prospered in the film industry, “Cinema Symposium”
supplies inspiration for other young Vietnamese Americans who also
have desires to make it in the business.
The symposium itself will also be a meeting place for everyone
to know and enrich themselves in Vietnamese culture and the growing
Vietnamese cinema. Dong Du, a fourth-year Computer Science student
and the other VNLC co-director reasoned that “Cinema
Symposium” will provide more appeal for the younger
Vietnamese American generation to learn about their culture.
“We know that not many people know about these actors and
actresses,” Du said. “Probably most of them never heard
of “˜Green Dragon’ or “˜Three Seasons (Ba
Mua)’ but then this is part of our culture, this is part of
our heritage, this is part of what the young Vietnamese community
has built for the last ten to twenty years and we’ve reached
the point (where) we’re finally having good movies about the
Vietnamese culture. We want to have these directors, actors and
actresses to talk to our generation.”
Though concentrated in espousing Vietnamese cinema to Vietnamese
people, the event is for anyone who wants to experience the roots
of Vietnamese cinema through the words of the film pioneers
themselves. Kelly Nguyen, the event coordinator for VNLC and a
fourth-year economics student minoring in public policy, thinks
that the rarity of even seeing Vietnamese films will interest a
broad range of people.
“We want to aim at Vietnamese American college students
but I think just those who are going to be enjoying the event are
not (just) the students but anyone who enjoys watching
films,” Kelly said. “In particular by films made by
Vietnamese American because you don’t get to see that
(often).”
Since film can reach a wide audience, the symposium can also be
a great vehicle for the Vietnamese culture, informing people in a
way that the annual Tet festival and language tutorials are not
able to do.
“Art can be used as a very effective tool to display
culture,” Nguyen said. “Through film you can show a lot
about a cultural experience that might not be effective (in) just
reading books or learning it through history.”
The films themselves will differentiate between different
aspects of the Vietnamese culture. For example, “Three
Seasons” captures the raw essence of Vietnam and the people
who live there, while “Green Dragon deals with the
assimilation of Vietnamese immigrants in America.
While “Cinema Symposium” does provide a peek inside
Vietnamese cinema and culture, the presentation aims also to
inspire future filmmakers to not be held back by barriers.
“They are leading the way for the new waves of younger
directors and film students who might be discouraged, who say
“˜I’m never going to make it as a filmmaker because I am
Asian or I am Vietnamese American,'” Nguyen said.
“Cinema Symposium” will be taking place Sunday at 3
p.m. in Ackerman Grand Ballroom.
