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A new film directed by Timothy Linh Bui is now available on DVD, reuniting Timothy with Oscar-winning star Forest Whitaker and Patrick Swayze, plus other big names such as Jessica Biel and Ray Liotta.

The film can be rented at Blockbuster or online on Netflix, and other places where movies are rented.

Timothy is, of course, the older of the Bui brothers that brought us Three Seasons and Green Dragon. It was on Green Dragon that Timothy first directed Whitaker and Swayze.

The film’s story, based on the oft-observed presmise that life is full of strange coincidences and serendipitous intersections, is co-written by Timothy and another Viet filmmaker, Stephane Gauger the director of Owl and the Sparrow. (Read more about Owl here and here.)

The four principal characters lead their separate, and desperate, lives — except for one guy, a mortician named after the typewriter keyboard (Qwerty), who’s strange but not desperate. These lives then intersect in the most extraordinary ways. If the Bolsavik were glib, he’d say this film is something like “Boulevard of Broken Dreams meets Crash.”

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Remember the Bolsavik was telling you here that the boat-people documentary “Bolinao 52″ was nominated for regional Emmy in two categories?

Well, it won both. Yep, two nominations, two wins.

The film, directed by first-time director Duc Nguyen, won the Outstanding Achievement in Documnetary award. It also won the Outstanding Music Composition award for the original score by Mark Izu. Pictured right is Duc with Mai-Phuong Nguyen, MD, his wife and the film’s producer/publicist.

In his acceptance speech, Duc Nguyen dedicated the award to his mentor and the “Mother of Asian American Film” Loni Ding, Professor of Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley, who is recovery from a severe stroke. Nguyen also dedicated the award to the 2.0 million Vietnamese boat people around the world who, the film’s blog says here, “remind us of the ‘high price of freedom.’”

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The documentary film about the horrific experience of 110 boat people left stranded at sea, leaving only 52 survivors, has been nominated for a regional Emmy award.

The film “Bolinao 52,” directed by Duc Nguyen, is nominated in two categories, Documentary, and Music Composition/Arrangement, for the regional Emmy award - given for outstanding achievement in television by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

Unlike the Oscars, however, there are national Emmys and there are regional Emmys. Bolinao 52 has been nominated for awards in the so-called Northern California region, which covers everything from Visalia in the San Joaquin Valley all the way up to the Oregon border, and actually includes also the entire State of Hawaii and the TV market of Reno, Nevada. See complete list of nominees here.

On related news, PBS has chosen Bolinao 52 to be broadcast nationally. Not all stations show the film at the same time, though. The director has the various airdates on his Blogspot here.

For Southern California, the film will be aired on KCET at 2PM next Sunday May 10.

It’s not surprising that the film’s music is nominated for the Emmy. The principal performer, Van-Anh Vo (Võ Vân Ánh) is one of the top traditional musicians of Vietnam. A video of the recording session appears at the end of this entry.

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The refugee boat left Vietnam with 110 people, but after being stranded at sea, only 52 lived to land in the Phillipines. The horrific journey lasted 37 days and people on the boat had to resort to cannibalism to survive.

The Bolsavik has written about the documentary film “Bolinao 52″ before. Like, here. In Bolinao 52, filmmaker Duc Nguyen chronicles the horrors that one woman lived through, and witnesses her return to the island town of Bolinao to seek peace and honor the dead. Nguyen also briefly examines the controversy over the decision to court-martial the captain of the U.S. war ship that gave the refugees food, water and directions, but did not pick them up.

At 1pm today, the film will screen in a program entitled “Bolinao 52: Remembrance, Reconciliation & Healing” at Bowers Museum in Santa Ana. Duc Nguyen will be there to talk with the audience, together with other panelists.

Following the jump are more details and the film’s trailer.

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As the Bolsavik has mentioned in this space before, shown today at ViFF, before the Dustin Nguyen spotlight, is a special sneak preview of A Village Called Versailles.

Directed by Leo Chiang, the 75-minute documentary follows the rebuilding and transformation of the area named Versailles in East New Orleans, where almost all the residents are Vietnamese.

In particular, the film documents how the local Vietnamese community, led by Catholic priest Vien The Nguyen, successfully fought the city’s plan to locate a landfill right next to the community.

Screening is at 3pm, at UC Irvine, room HIB 100. Following the screening will be a panel discussion on the rebuilding of the community in Louisiana after Katrina.

Appearing on the panel will be Bishop Mai Thanh Lương, auxillary bishop of Orange County. Bishop Mai was the founder of the Versailles village.

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The Vietnamese International Film Festival launches its second week-end with a day of free screenings held at UCLA tomorrow Thursday April 9.

Starting at 4pm will be a set of short films including the hard hitting Life Out of a Stone (in Vietnamese: Đội Đá Vá Đời) - a 19-minute documentary by Hồ Thanh Tuấn, on laborers who cut and carry stones using crude hand tools. Also included is the animated Cuội and the Banyan Tree (right) by Tạ Thanh Hải, telling a Vietnamese fantasy about the man in the moon.

At 7:30pm is When Autumn Sunlight Comes (in Vietnamese: Khi Nắng Thu Về), a feature from by Vietnam’s Bùi Trung Hải. The film won a Gold Remi at the WorldFest-Houston film festival in 2008.

The director is already in town and will be at the screening for Q&A.

Click here for a full schedule, with film synopsis.

Highlights for the next few days of ViFF:

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Celebrity par excellence: Even the TV reporter/host wanted to take a souvenir picture with Dustin Nguyen.

To the right above is Thang Dinh Nguyen, the head of Boat People S.O.S. who will be on a ViFF panel discussion. In the middle is Pham Phu Minh, a shareholder of Nguoi Viet and the publisher/editor of Phu Nu Dien Dan and Chi Linh magazines.	Dustin Nguyen answering interviews from Saigon TV.

Answering questions from VHN-TV is Le-Van-Kiet, who directed the critically acclaimed Dust of Life. His second feature Sad Fish — starring Orchid Lam Quynh, plus what looks like a re-cast of Journey From the Fall: Kieu Chinh, Long Nguyen, Jayvee Hiep Mai – will World Premiere at ViFF on Saturday at 5pm.	Orchid Lam Quynh, who has a day job as a Math professor at Cypress College, emceed the opening ceremonies for ViFF.

Above is Khoa Do, the 2005 “Young Australian of the Year” and director of Footy Legends, which the Bolsavik thinks is probably the best film ever made by a Vietnamese director.

Some more pictures of Khoa Do. Here he is with a couple of fans.	And here he is in the middle, with Dustin Nguyen to the right, and, to the left, Tram Le, the Chair of VAALA’s Board of Directors,

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And here’s Khoa talking with, on the right, Kieu Chinh, the veteran Vietnamese actress known for a string of famous roles including as Suyuan in The Joy Luck Club. In the middle is Alan Vo Ford, an executive producer of Journey from the Fall.

These three people are, from left to right: Sukhee Kang, the mayor of Irvine; Dr. Vicki Ruiz, the Dean of Humanities at UC Irvine; and Ysa Le, VAALA executive director and a co-director of ViFF.

TV crews making themselves at home all over the lobby.

An amazing documentary film following the lives of orphans airlifted out of Vietnam in the waning days of the war will have its World Premiere at ViFF tonight, 7:30pm, at the Bowers Museum.

Following the showing will be a panel discussion with the director and a number of former orphans.

The film Operation Babylift: The Lost Children of Vietnam is the brain child of Texas-based Tammy Nguyen Lee and features many compelling interviews with not just former adoptees and their families, but also American volunteers who had worked in orphanages in Saigon during the war and who were involved in the airlift.

Operation Babylift was an initiative approved by President Gerald Ford to retrieve 2,500 Vietnamese orphans during the last days of the war and bring them to safety in the U.S. Even with the best of intentions, however, the orphans, all of whom found adopting families, grew up facing unique challenges.

The movie follows a number of these former orphans who are now grown men and women in their thirties, and explore their issues including prejudice and identity crisis.

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Vietnam’s national film awards, called the Golden Kite Awards, were given out Sunday night, and Vietnamese-American filmmakers walked off with a sizable chunk of the prizes. The Vietnamese-language Thanh Niên has a list of winners here.

Dustin Nguyen, of 21 Jump Street fame (pictured right, from the movie The Rebel), captured the best actor award for his role in The Legend is Alive (Vietnamese title: Huyền thoại bất tử), helmed by Vietnamese-American director Luu Huynh.

Luu also won the best director award for the film.

Kathy Uyen, an OC resident, walked off with the best supporting actress award for her role in Passport to Love (Vietnamese: Chuyện tình xa xứ), directed by L.A.-born and OC-based Victor Vu (see this entry).

There was no award for best film, instead the organizers gave two co-runner-up awards (the “Silver Kites”) to two films, and The Legend is Alive won one of them.

If the organizers could not decide on a best film, others were not so undecisive. The media panel awarded a Golden Kite for best film to Owl and the Sparrow, a feature film shot entirely on a handheld steadycam, by first-time Vietnamese-American director Stéphane Gauger. Owl also won in the strangely named category “best film in coproduction with a foreign country” - a madeup category first used in 2004 to give an award to The Buffalo Boy (Vietnamese: Mùa Len Trâu), directed by UCLA grad Nghiem-Minh Nguyen-Vo.

The audience voted for another Golden Kite best film award for Passport to Love.

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A romantic comedy by Vietnamese-American filmmaker Victor Vu is scheduled to be released in Vietnam on Valentine’s day, in the country’s top theatre chain the Megastar cinemas.

Passport to Love is a coming-of-age story of two young foreign exchange students from Vietnam - close friends with opposite personalities - whose lives were changed when they met two Vietnamese-American  women. Khang (Bình Minh - on the right in picture) is a charming and handsome playboy from a tremendously rich family; Hieu (Huy Khánh) is his earnest sidekick, a hardworking Bill Gates wannabe. “The Boys” are sent to study abroad in the US and to bring home a coveted American university degree.

Once in America, Khang’s life spirals into chaos. He even gets himself arrested, and then he falls in love with the arresting officer Tiffany (Kathy Uyen - on the left in picture), a young single mother. Meanwhile, Hieu finds himself trapped between his almost too perfect fiancé, Thao (Tăng Bảo Uyên), back home, and the tempting, Viet Kieu pageant girl Jennifer (Ngọc Diệp). When Hieu’s mother falls ill, he must return to Vietnam. A distraught Jennifer follows in secrecy. Meanwhile, Khang and Tiffany are just turning over a new leaf when Khang is confronted by his very disappointed father.

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