Subject Librarian
Dartmouth College
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Introduction
As part of the French colony of Indochina (Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos), films in Vietnam were largely imported from France via the Indochina Films and Cinemas company (IFC) and to a lesser extent from the USA, Britain and Hong Kong. French-trained photographer Nguyen Lan Huong (aka Huong Ky) made the short film comedy Mot dong kem tau duoc ngua/A Penny for a Horse in 1924, as well as filming the funeral of Emperor Khai Dinh and the enthronement of Bao Dai in 1926. The ghost story Canh dong ma/The Haunted Field (1937), an early synchronized sound film directed by Tran Phi, was shot in a Hong Kong studio with Vietnamese actors.
Before a distinct Vietnamese cinema could be established, the First Indochina War (1945–54), a struggle for independence from French colonial rule, put the country and its filmmakers on a war footing. The war initiated a tradition of propagandist documentary filmmaking, with Viet Nam tren duong thang loi/Vietnam on the Road to Victory (1953) and Dien Bien Phu (1954), which described the eponymous battle that led to French defeat, deemed important examples. In 1954 the Geneva Peace Accords divided North and South Vietnam pending national elections; in the North, the Vietnam Film Studio was established in 1956, with the Hanoi Film School opening in 1959; the first (North) Vietnamese feature film was Chung mot dong song/Together on the Same River (1959), directed by Nguyen Hong Nghi and Pham Ky Nam. The US-supported regime in South Vietnam prevented elections, which led to the Second Indochina War (1955–75), known in the West as the Vietnam War and in Vietnam as the American War. Hundreds of North Vietnamese war documentaries and newsreels, as well as a number of docudramas, were made during the conflict, with Du kích Cu Chi/Cu Chi Guerillas (1967) and Luy thep Vinh Linh/The Vinh Linh Steel Rampart (Ngoc Qunih, 1970) considered important films. ...
Kuhn, A., & Westwell, G. (2020). Vietnam, film in. In A Dictionary of Film Studies. Oxford University Press. Retrieved 1 May. 2023
In the library's collections/Searching the online catalog
You can start your search here with these subject headings below:
- vietnam war 1961 1975 motion pictures and the warMost resources are located in the call number range DS 557 through DS 559.9.
- motion pictures indochinaCall number range PN 1993.5 .I82 on Baker Stacks Level 4.
- motion pictures asiaCall number range PN 1993.5 .A75 on Baker Stacks Level 4.
Introductory reading(s)
Contemporary Asian cinema: popular culture in a global frame by Call Number: Baker-Berry PN 1993.5 .A75 C655 2006ISBN: 9781845202378This book presents the most authoritative assessment of contemporary Asian cinema available. Each chapter describes the cultural aspects of popular film production, analyzing key films in the context of the national, the regional and the global.
Glimpses of freedom: independent cinema in Southeast Asia by Call Number: Baker-Berry PN 1993.5 .A785 G55 2012ISBN: 9780877277552Since the late 1990s, a vivid new sphere of cinematic practice in Southeast Asia has emerged and been identified as independent. What exactly does this term mean in relation to the way films and videos are made, and the way they look?
Other library resource(s)
Trinh T. Minh-ha from Oxford Bibliographies Online by Call Number: Electronic resourceISBN: 9780199791286Born in Hanoi, Vietnam in 1952 and raised in Saigon Trinh T. Minh-ha received her schooling in music composition in Saigon before immigrating to the United States in 1970 for her higher education. In addition to her filmmaking, she composes music; creates multimedia installations, publishes on literary and film theory, feminism, and postcolonialism; and teaches at the University of California, Berkeley’s Gender and Women’s Studies Department. ...
Selected movie title(s)
Find more Vietnamese films in the library's collections.
Guava house = Mùa ôi by Call Number: Streaming videoIn the film the changing life of Hanoi is seen through the consciousness of Hoa, a model at a school of fine arts. Hoa's mind has been frozen by a traumatic brain injury when he fell out of a guava tree when he was 13. His perceptions and memories are stuck in his childhood. The house with the guava tree has been under new ownership for many years; nevertheless, Hoa still drops by the villa every day despite the threats of the "normal" people who live there. Three women who surround and support Hoa are a teacher who is Hoa's younger sister, a girl student who is the villa owners daughter, and a young rural woman who does modelling beside him at the art school.
Nuoc = 2030 by Call Number: Streaming videoIn a near future Vietnam where global warming and rising seawater levels have forced cultivation to be done on floating farms, a strong-willed woman has to make a critical decision about her ex-lover, a suspect of her husband's murder.
The return = Trơ về by Call Number: Streaming videoLoan, a teacheress from Hà Nội, is teaching at a village school in Northern Vietnam. Hùng, the brother of her colleague, is unemployed. Although falling in love with Loan, but he has to leave the country for a rich life abroad. During holiday times, Loan meets Tuấn, an old friend of hers, and accepts his marriage proposal. Three years later, Hùng comes back from overseas with the new name Vincent Nguyễn. He finds out that Loan's husband is his business partner and she has just left for Hà Nội sometimes ago.
The third wife by Call Number: Jones Media DVD #22584ISBN: 9781980039815In nineteenth-century rural Vietnam, fourteen-year-old May becomes the third wife of wealthy landowner Hung. Soon, she learns that she can only gain status by asserting herself as a woman who can give birth to a male child. May's hope to change her status turns into a real and tantalizing possibility when she gets pregnant. Faced with forbidden love and its devastating consequences, May finally comes to an understanding of the brutal truth: the options available to her are few and far between.
Vựơt sóng = Journey from the fall by Call Number: Jones Media DVD #8805ISBN: 9781594448324Despite his allegiance to the toppled South Vietnamese government, Long Nguyen decides to remain in Vietnam. Imprisoned in a Communist re-education camp, he urges his family to make the escape by boat without him. His wife, son, and mother embark on the arduous ocean voyage in the hope of reaching the U.S. and freedom.
The Vietnam War on film: a short, selected list
Find other Vietnam war films in the library's collections.
Cinema-interval by Call Number: eBookISBN: 9780203949788Vietnamese filmmaker and feminist thinker Trinh T. Minh-ha is one of the most powerful and articulate voices in independent filmmaking. In her writings and interviews, as well as in her filmscripts, Trinh explores what she describes as the "infinite relation" of word to image. Cinema-Interval brings together her recent conversations on film and art, life and theory, with Homi Bhabha, Deb Verhoeven, Annamaria Morelli and other critics. Together these interviews offer the richest presentation of this extraordinary artist's ideas. ...
Film and propaganda in America by Call Number: Baker-Berry PN 1993.5 .U6 F47 1990ISBN: 9780313208584During World War I, the medium of film took on a worldwide role. Capitalizing on its potential for persuasion, governments made unprecedented use of film to record actual fighting, help train combatants, sway neutral opinion, and make civilians on the home front aware of the need for sacrifice and patriotic commitment. Propaganda, including film propaganda, became an indispensable part of the equipment of the modern state at war. In this volume, the first of a five volume, 6000-page series, the editors bring together representative unpublished government documents relating to film production in the United States during World War I. Emphasis is on unpublished material rather than actual film scripts or reviews of popular feature films of the era available elsewhere. ...
Late thoughts on an old war: the legacy of Vietnam by Call Number: Baker-Berry DS 558 .B45 2004ISBN: 9780820325897Philip D. Beidler sees less and less of the hard-won perspective of the common soldier in what America has made of that war. Each passing year, he says, dulls our sense of immediacy about Vietnam's costs, opening wider the temptation to make it something more necessary, neatly contained, and justifiable than it should ever become. Here Beidler draws on deeply personal memories to reflect on the war's lingering aftereffects and the shallow, evasive ways we deal with them. ...
The Vietnam experience: a concise encyclopedia of American literature, songs, and films by Call Number: Baker-Berry DS 557.73 .H55 1998ISBN: 9780313301834The Vietnam War was one of the most painful and divisive events in American history. The conflict, which ultimately took the lives of 58,000 Americans and more than three million Vietnamese, became a subject of bitter and impassioned debate. The most dramatic, and frequently the most enduring, efforts to define and articulate America's ill-fated involvement in Vietnam emerged from popular culture. American journalists, novelists, playwrights, poets, songwriters, and filmmakers, many of them eyewitnesses, have created powerful, heartfelt works documenting their thoughts and beliefs about the war. By examining those works, this book provides readers with a fascinating resource that explores America's ongoing struggle to assess the war and its legacies. ...
The wars we took to Vietnam: cultural conflict and storytelling by Call Number: Baker-Berry PS 228 .V5 B38 1996ISBN: 9780520204331What Americans refer to as the Vietnam War embraces much more than the conflict with North Vietnam. Milton J. Bates considers the other conflicts that Americans brought to that war: the divisions stemming from differences in race, class, sex, generation, and frontier ideology. In exploring the rich vein of writing and film that emerged from the Vietnam War era, he strikingly illuminates how these stories reflect American social crises of the period. ...
Finding scholarly articles and journal title(s)
You can find scholarly literature for Vietnamese cinema in a variety of journals. However, if you want to do targeted searching, you can start your search in a subject specific database such as Film & Television Literature Index. You can also use the search box at the top of the page.
Film & television literature indexCall Number: Electronic resourceThis index covers over 300 journal and magazine titles for film and television reviews, scholarly and critical analysis of cinema and television, and articles of popular interest about film and television. About half the journals and magazines are film periodicals and the other half cover film and television with some regularity. Subject coverage includes film & television theory, preservation & restoration, writing, production, cinematography, technical aspects, and reviews.
Screen studies collection by Call Number: Electronic resourceA comprehensive survey of current publications related to film scholarship alongside detailed filmographies. This collection includes the FIAF International Index to Film Periodicals Database and the detailed and complementary filmographies created by the American Film Institute (AFI) and the British Film Institute.
Media history digital library by Call Number: Electronic resourceThe Media History Digital Library digitizes collections of classic media periodicals that belong in the public domain for full public access. The project is supported by owners of materials who loan them for scanning, and donors who contribute funds to cover the cost of scanning.
The Collection feature extensive runs of several important trade papers and fan magazines.
Web of science citation databases by Call Number: Electronic resourceThe online version of 3 separate ISI indexes: Arts & Humanities Citation Index, Science Citation Index and, Social Sciences Citation Index.
Internet resource(s)
- How the Vietnam film industry is booming even in the face of censorship by Silvia WongVietnam is on track to become a dynamic content market in Southeast Asia, with a booming production sector, a boost in box office and international awards. ... [09/08/2023]
- Tired of War? The New Best 10 Vietnamese Films from Cultural ReadsWhat are Vietnam Movies best known for? I realized that the “Vietnamese” movies I watched were American war movies like Apocalypse Now, Full Metal Jacket, Platoon or Good morning, Vietnam. Although entertaining, all I could remember were explosions, guns, and a questionable and out-of-date way of dividing Americans and Vietnamese into “civilized” and “savage” groups. The one thing they have in common is the Vietnam war, or as they call it in Vietnam, The American War. It’s no surprise that these films are famous. The movies were high-budget productions and popular in the United States. Unfortunately, these “Vietnam movies” don’t teach you anything about Vietnamese culture. ...
Keeping up with Film Studies journal literature
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