Cinema Junkie by Beth Accomando

On April 30, 1975, American forces pulled out of Vietnam. The event that marked the end of the war also marked the beginning of a new chapter for the Vietnamese people, some of whom fled to the United States while others remained behind. The new film Journey from the Fall (opening April 6 at Horton Plaza Theaters) follows one familys fate in the years following the fall of Saigon.

Filmmaker Ham Tran was born in Saigon. In 1982, when he was just eight years old, he and his parents left Vietnam for the United States. His desire to understand what his parents and their generation went through led him to make a short film called The Anniversary. In researching that film, he came across a photo of a Vietnamese boat refugee. The woman had severe burns on her chest. The caption said that her mother had poured boiling water on her to keep pirates from abducting her. Thats when Tran asked himself a question.

HAM TRAN: Why has this story not been told in the last thirty years? Why do we keep seeing American vets in films about Vietnam? And thats really the reason I started on this path.

That path led to Journey from the Fall, a film about one Vietnamese familys struggle to survive in the aftermath of the war. Miriam Lam teaches Southeast Asian studies at UC Riverside. She says she appreciates the way Journey from the Fall breaks Hollywood stereotypes.

MIRIAM LAM: Often you think of these refugees as very weak and in some ways if you are considering the politics of the situation as very passive or puppet-like, and none of these characters, the Asian men or the females were weak at all and I found that quite new.

In order to tell this Vietnam story, filmmaker Ham Tran enlisted actual Vietnamese refugees. One of them was Long Nguyen.

LONG NGUYEN: I left Vietnam when I was 16, and if you look on TV the last day of America pulling out of the embassy on the 29th you see a bunch of people outside the fence, one of thems my family. But anyway we didnt get on the helicopter, and we got a chance to escape the next day theres still two boats left at the pier and somehow we managed to get five of us onto the boat.

In the film, Nguyen plays a South Vietnamese man who urges his wife and family to escape by boat to the U.S. while he remains behind to fight.

Nguyens character is imprisoned in a Communist re-education camp. Meanwhile, his family makes the arduous journey to America. To create the script, Ham Tran interviewed 400 people from the Vietnamese community in the U.S. Their personal stories provided the dramatic material for the film. But Tran says he found very little visual documentation to use as reference. That lack of material concerns Miriam Lam.

MIRIAM LAM: In terms of re-education camp experiences, yes this is a huge part of history that isnt in the history textbooks yet and its been an ongoing concern for academics who are worried about this period in world history and Vietnam history and US history Its similar to the Holocaust victims earlier its a whole generation that were not going to hear from much longer. And many of them are dying.

Ham Tran wanted to accurately convey the experiences of the boat people and the prisoners at the re-education camps. Each day on the set, Tran asked his cast and crew if he was getting the details right. For instance, in one scene on a boat a storm breaks out. Tran says his impulse was to show everyone ducking for cover.

HAM TRAN: Somebody that was cast as a boat person and was a boat person herself stood up and said no, no. Ham thats not how it happened. When youre out there on the boat youre so thirsty and youve been going days without water that when it rains everybody climbs up on deck. We collect it in our shirts we wring it out later for water, we take any kind of tarp we can find and collect it and save that water, and it was because of her that we changed the scene and everybody was trying to drink from that rain water and it became like a benediction like a sacred moment for them.

Now that the films done, Tran says he takes pride that its helping younger Vietnamese Americans to understand what their parents went through.

HAM TRAN: The younger generation will come up to me and say my parents dont talk about it but now I totally understand them. Another one came back to me and said since your film my dads been telling me a lot more about his own experience... that was the rewarding part, to get the older generation to start talking because they want to talk but they dont know where to start.

Ham Tran hopes that his film will provide a starting point for a broader discussion about the Vietnamese experience.

Click here to listen to Beth Accomando's feature on The World. Vy
May 07, 2007 at 05:23 PM
I cried every five minutes in this movie. It speaks the truth and honesty. It is similar to movies like the Schindler's List and Hotel Rwanda. It illustrates faith, hope, and a part of our past that should not ever be forgotten even if it's not our happiest moment. Thanks for making this movie. I will have something to share with my non-Vietnamese friends, their families and everyone that I know who didn't have a chance to learn about this missing part of Vietnam/American history. -----

Ryan
May 22, 2007 at 07:25 PM
I was hoping that someone would make this kind of movie. Although it's not a documentary, it shows many real events that took place after the fall of Saigon. I can relate to this movie because my family and I went through similar ordeals. My father was a South Vietnam officer imprisoned by the Vietcong after the war. He spent four years in the re-education camp as the Vietcong called it. When he was released in 1979, he was constantly harassed by the local authority. At the time, my family's farm land and personal properties were confiscated by the authorities. They broke into our house and took whatever they can carry off. We had to borrow and sometime begged friends to lend us money for food. We had no life there and were forced to sell our house and fled the country. We made several attempts to escape by boat. The second attempt ended in a disaster: our boat was overtaken by a large storm and shrunk in the middle of the South China Sea. Half of us did not make it back. We were rescued by the North Vietnam Navy and fortunately for us, they decided to release us. The bodies of the dead were found floating at a local beach. We managed to successfully escape Vietnam on our third try. The journey from South Vietnam to Indonesia took three days and nights. We were chased by both Indonesia and Thailand pirates along the way. Out of the 256 passengers, three die as a result of heat stroke. For the next fourteen months, we were transferred from one refugee camp to the next. In 1981, my father, brother and I started our new life in America while my mother and two sisters remained behind. We were separated from each other for next ten years. We are now united as a family in this wonderful country. As I reflect back on my journey, I'm so thankful to America and it's people for given us a start at a new life. Yet, at the same time I feel deeply sadden for the 250 thousands Vietnamese that perished at sea in their attempt to seek freedom and those who are still living under communist rule.

Beth Accomando
May 24, 2007 at 05:58 AM
Ryan, Thanks for sharing your story. And I urge people to seek out Tran's film since it was not widely distributed.

kate huynh
May 29, 2007 at 10:30 PM
PLEASE BRING THIS MOVIE TO DES MOINES IOWA. WE HAVE A LARGE NUMBER OF VIETNAMESE PEOPLE AND OTHER(S) WHO WOULD LIKE TO SEE THIS MOIVE.

Tam H. Shook
October 19, 2007 at 08:36 PM
October 19, 2007 Dear Ham Tran, First time ever that I saw the Introduction of your movie "The Anniversary" in the "Voice of the Heart" from Trung Tam Asia, Video 43. My Mom got this video as a gift for her 100th Birthday, and Mom just passed away about eight (8) months ago. Finally, I sat down and watch this video again, and miss my Mom so so much, and thought that I should send you a little note to thank you for a wonderful, wonderful job, and to let you know how proud of me to see you, a Vietnamese young Filmmaker, standing up there, to thank your parents whom brought you up and to thank everyone when you received your awards from Asia, and you really really touched me so much! Even though I haven't seen the whole movie but I know it's a great one, and I'm so happy and appreciate you so much for what you have done for all of us, our Vietnamese people community all over the world, and for other people in this world, too. Anh Ham Tran, please do your very best to bring all of your movies, "Your Anniversary" and "Journey from the Fall" and all of your future movies to Santa Rosa, California, so we all can enjoy them soon! Wishing you and your family the very best of everything, and hope all of your dreams will come true. Keep up your wonderful work!!:) Sincerely, Thanh-Tam Hoang Shook