WHY VIET NAM? A new series shot over 30 years in Việt Nam & the USA is a spirited alternative to the Ken Burns view of the war, a personal film by a Vietnamese-American woman intended to promote healing & a better understanding of the Other.
This episode, to follow "From Hollywood to Hanoi" deals with the extraordinary friendship that grew between the filmmaker & General Vo Nguyen Giap, known as the Red Napoleon, one of the most successful military leaders of the 20th century, who led the People's Army to free his country from colonial slavery.
A shocking confrontation with Robert McNamara reveals that the wounds of war remain open. Vietnamese veterans reflect on the devastating after effects of a conflict that cost millions of South East Asian lives.
Cast: Dad, Mom, Me, General Vo Nguyen Giap, General William Westmoreland, Robert Strange McNamara, Colonel Archimedes Patti, Tim Page & the people of Viet Nam.
Executive Producer: Christopher Hampton
Composer: Philip Glass
I never planned to spend 29 years on a film.
For my first trip back to my homeland in 1987, I had to go to Paris to get a visa. Viet Nam was listed as the 5th poorest country on earth. There was nothing. As a last resort, I used poetry to open doors. My poem got me unprecedented access to one of the most feared, reclusive men in Ha Noi: General Vo Nguyen Giap, Time Magazine called the “Red Napoleon.”
My filmed conversations with General Giap, who defeated the French at Dien Bien Phu in 1954 and outmaneuvered the USA for 10,000 days, has helped me heal and strive to live in peace for all sentient beings.
In our collective American memories, Viet Nam was a war, a hell-hole, a syndrome,” not a country. Hollywood films perpetuated this to a new generation of Vietnamese and Americans, who, for different reasons, still fought the war. FADE IN: This was pointed out to me in Viet Nam as the opposite road to a lasting peace. The Vietnamese are now America’s staunch allies, incited to go to war with China, not IF, but WHEN needed.
FADE OUT: After the Fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975, I became an American. I met with, listened and read the oral histories by our vets with titles like “What Vietnam Did to Us.” Why VN, should be the question. I wondered what was done to the people not just in Viet Nam, but in 2 other very poor South East Asian countries: Cambodia & Laos, (called Nixon’s Sideshow). My American husband embarked me on a quest to give a voice to the traumatized, displaced, the winners and losers.
We Vietnamese had to bury our anger so deep we forgot to forgive ourselves. In Viet Nam, I found myself taken in by people from all walks of life. I began to film them. One was my father’s beloved teacher who made history. But in a strange twist of fate, he and his mentor Ho Chi Minh became our mortal enemy. My encounters with General Vo Nguyen Giap and the people over two and a half decades moved me to never give up until I could share what I learned. I doggedly used film and memory to help me learn about the Other. My affliction, my film obession mixed with nostalgia, loss, trauma and tremendous survivor’s guilt went through truly strange encounters that led me to the beginning of my next journey. And so it went until my husband & dad passed way.
Today, I am thankfully not alone. As a Vietnamese-American with 3 films, to share, I greet you at the beginning of a new dawn. General Giap and his wife Co Ha, taught me to make friends, not enemies. The people I have met on my journey fuel me to invite you to join a world community to build peace, not war. I now show my films to your children in school. We will no longer be shut out. In fact, I invite you all in.
I take on this grass roots tour, which my composer Philip Glass who is celebrating his 80 yrs on earth, got quite excited about. Philip said: “DO IT. BE ON THE RIGHT SIDE OF HISTORY.” I embark on my People’s Film Festival for Peace, to give back to Americans who took my family in as the first war refugee family from Nam. We were the first Vietnamese immigrants in VA! In 1975, I was sworn in as an American citizen in LA as the headlines roared: APRIL 30th VIET NAM is NO MORE. SAIGON FELL. I was starring in a Hollywood film with Robert Duvall. Boat people flooded our shores: my four elderly grandparents came freezing to Camp Pendleton, lost and confused, but happy to live and die on free American soil. We cannot forget. We will never again lose our country. I am proud to be an American as well as a Vietnamese. We stand together as citizens of a free world. I believe we are here to help and protect one another. Been there. Done that.
As long as our tax money buys war machines, we Americans have a responsibility to help homeless war refugees, regardless of race, gender and religion.
Tiana Alexandra-Silliphant (Thanh Nga) Transparent Moon