The Vietnamese International Film Festival, after an exhilerating 11-day run, wound down Sunday with another full day of screening, a closing film, an award ceremony, all topped by an exciting Closing Gala with deejay and live music.
ViFF’s choice for closing film was “All About Dad,” the feature-film directorial debut for Bay Area-based Mark Tran. The film is a new, funny and innovative treatment of the old issue of generational/cultural gap between the traditional parent and his children whom he loves and who love him, though in starkly conflicting ways.
The director and practically the entire cast came down from San Jose to attend the screening. The movie was wildly applauded by the audience. Even UCI’s projectionist came out of the control room to congratulate the filmmakers. Following ViFF, “All About Dad” will next screen at the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival (click here) on May 5.
The festival closed with an award ceremony and a gala. There were two sets of award, an Audience Choice award and an award called the “Trống Đồng” – the word means “bronze drum,” but the award name is untranslated lest it be taken as being lower than gold and silver. The bronze drum is often taken as a symbol of Vietnamese culture.
The “Trống Đồng,” awarded by ViFF’s screening committee and executive committe, went to the feature film “Footy Legends” by Aussie Viet Khoa Do (read more here and here); and to the short film “A Summer Rain” by Ela Thier (here) – statement on the universal experience of the immigrant seen through the heart and mind of an Israeli child who moved in next to a Vietnamese family.
The Audience Choice award for feature film went to the documentary “Operation Babylift: The Lost Children of Vietnam” by Tammy Nguyen Lee. The film (read more here) traces back what happened to the 2500 Vietnamese children in orphanages airlifted by the U.S. in the final days of the Vietnam War. The director had attended the screening at ViFF together with the producer, many of the volunteers and adoptees who were featured in the film, as well as many adoptees who were not. Pictured at the right are the director (right), Sister Mary Nelle Gage, a former orphanage volunteer (left), and Lyly Koenig, an adoptee.
In the short category, the Audience Choice went to “Delivery Day” – also by Khoa Do – something many Viets in the US can relate with: The day Mom has to deliver clothes from her home-based sweat shop.
Shown earlier in the day was “The Moon at the Bottom of the Well” (in Vietnamese: Trăng Nơi Đáy Giếng), a profound film by Hue (Vietnam)-based director Nguyen Vinh Son about family and human relationship, based on a short story by Thuy Mai. The film’s protagonist is a woman who loves her husband so much, she got him a second wife so he could have children. The film won the second-place award at Vietnam’s national film festival in 2008. Hong Anh, who plays the main character, won the Best Actress award at the Dubai International Film Festival.
The director Nguyen Vinh Son (pictured right) was present at the ViFF screening and related how, at Dubai, men came to see the film with their several wives, making for a small irony. The film is making a tour of 12 U.S. universities. Its next screening is on April 20 at the Pacific Film Archive at UC Berkeley (here).
