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Every year for 7 years now, the Vietnamese-American Arts & Letters Association (VAALA) has been holding a Mid-Autumn Festival Painting Contest for kids.

The Mid-Autumn Festival, probably originally a harvest festival, has evolved in tradition to become the Vietnamese day for kids.

Since 2003, VAALA (web site here) has been holding the annual painting competition for kids. As a measure of how strong the tradition has been going: Some kids who participated in the first competition are now in college; and some babies born in the year of the first competition are now participating in it.

This year’s competition took place on Saturday October 3, with the award ceremony the day after.

Enjoy the photos of people enjoying themselves.

Photos from the day of the contest are by Nguoi Viet reporter Ngoc Lan, used with permission.

The floor is as good a space as any to create art.

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We’re given fingers for a reason…

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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.

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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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ViFF continues today at UC Irvine with a couple sets of shorts and a special spotlight session on Dustin Nguyen who, several years ago, starred in the action TV series “21 Jump Street” as Officer Harry Truman Ioki - a cop who goes under cover as a high school student and who recently became the hottest Viet actor with his role in The Rebel, known in Vietnamese as Dòng Máu Anh Hùng.

Shown tonight will be Little Fish (pictured right) where Dustin will be in various states of undress and kissing Cate Blanchett.

The special session on Dustin Nguyen starts at 6pm with a reception hosted by Wells Fargo (you know, that bank whose profit report buoyed the stock market last week), followed by the screening.

Also shown today will be two sets of shorts running parallel at 12 noon and a third set at 3pm. All events today will be at UC Irvine, HIB 100.

In the third set of shorts is a special sneak preview of director Leo Chiang’s documentary A Village Called Versailles, a powerful story of the Vietnamese community in Louisiana uniting and standing up against the government’s plan to place a landfill right next to their neighborhood, post-Katrina.

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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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The Vietnamese International Film Festival, known by its acronym ViFF and also by its web site name VietFilmFest, kicks off later today in Irvine, opening with a tremendously touching and inspirational feature film by a Viet who was named Young Australian of the Year.

The film, Footy Legends, is a stirring emotional and uplifiting story about a young viet man who struggles to become a professional (Australian-style) football player to help raise his sister and support his grandfather in a nursing home.

The director, Khoa Do, in 2005 was named Young Australian of the Year for his “leadership, compassion, and will to inspire and inform Australians on issues that affect our communities.”

Do is already in town. He will be at the screening and will do Q&A afterwards.

The film festival, now in its fourth year, is a joint project of VAALA (Vietnamese-American Arts and Letters Association) and VNLC (Vietnamese Language and Culture) at UCLA.

The festival will run over two long weekends, from tonight until April 12. A press release announcing the program can be found here.

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The president of a non-profit corporation called the Vietnamese Community of Souther (sic) California called a meeting to take action against Brian Doan’s exhibition at Cypress College, and the attendees decided to form a committee to look at the problem - reports Nguoi Viet’s Do Dzung here (in Vietnamese).

About a dozen people came to the meeting called by Lac Tan Nuygen for Sunday. (And yes, that’s how he spells his name. If it sounds familiar to you, that’s because in 2006 he ran for the seat once held by now Supervisor Janet Nguyen on the Garden Grove City Council and finished fifth in a field of eight. Or maybe it’s because the Bolsavik told this story once already.)

The low attendance did not please Nuygen. Answering a question from Do Dzung, he complained, “I was told many of the community groups would come, but they haven’t shown up yet. This is a big question for us and the community should raise the issue with them.”

Anyway, at the meeting one person came up a very sensible suggestion.

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The whole thing about F.O.B. II has pretty much boiled over with most people, but a low-level rumbling is still constantly going in emailing lists, forums, web sites, and a handful of print publications from out of town that are a little late to the debate.

A Vietnamese-American columnist at UCLA’s Daily Bruin (go Bruins!) added her thoughts to the mix here, in a piece entitled “Censorship of exhibit more offensive than art itself.”

The piece was picked for distribution by U-Wire and has appeared in other papers across the country such as the Minnesota Daily here.

Nam-Giao Do - born in the U.S. of refugee parents - did not mince words.

Excerpts:
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