English Translation by Trịnh Minh Uyên
These cinematic portrayals serve not only as a tribute to the resilience of the Vietnamese people, but also as an emotional reminder of the heavy sacrifices made in the search for liberty. The stories told through these films are deeply personal and collective, echoing the silent grief and courageous hope that have shaped generations. As viewers, we are invited to reflect on the enduring impact of history on the present, and to honor those whose journeys have paved the way for future communities to flourish in freedom and dignity.
The film’s narrative skillfully weaves together the personal accounts of survivors and their families, offering viewers a window into the harrowing realities that shaped the Vietnamese diaspora. Through interviews and archival footage, the documentary captures not only the pain and trauma but also the resilience and hope that sustained individuals during their perilous journeys. These stories underscore the importance of remembrance and acknowledgment, ensuring that future generations understand both the sacrifices made and the enduring spirit of those who sought a life of dignity and freedom. In this way, Boat People: A 50 Year Journey stands as both a historical record and a tribute to the indomitable will of the Vietnamese people.
Thanh Tâm’s influence has extended far beyond conventional broadcasting, reaching into the Vietnamese diaspora and fostering a sense of connection and cultural pride. Her dedication to presenting authentic stories and amplifying the voices of the community has helped bridge generational gaps and reinforce shared experiences. Through her leadership, Vietlive.TV has become a vital platform for Vietnamese narratives, encouraging dialogue and understanding among viewers worldwide. Her unwavering commitment to cultural preservation and community engagement is evident in the way she curates programming, choosing topics that resonate deeply with viewers from all walks of life. By prioritizing storytelling that honors personal histories and shared struggles, she has nurtured a space where Vietnamese identity can flourish, both at home and abroad.
Thanh Tâm's approach to media has consistently emphasized inclusivity, giving voice to marginalized groups and individuals whose stories might otherwise go unheard. Her innovative programming not only entertains but educates, inspiring younger generations to take pride in their heritage while also fostering a sense of belonging within the global Vietnamese community. By blending contemporary issues with traditional values, she ensures that Vietlive.TV remains relevant and impactful as it adapts to the evolving needs and interests of its audience.
Thanh Tâm’s impact is not limited to her work in broadcasting; her entrance into filmmaking marks a significant expansion of her commitment to sharing authentic Vietnamese stories. By leveraging her experience in media, she brings a unique perspective to the cinematic portrayal of the Vietnamese diaspora, tackling complex themes with sensitivity and depth. Her ability to intertwine personal narratives with broader social issues ensures that her films resonate on both emotional and intellectual levels, further solidifying her role as a cultural bridge for Vietnamese communities worldwide.
Thanh Tâm’s journey into film is a testament to her enduring dedication to representation and truth in media. Her transition from broadcasting to cinema demonstrates a commitment to exploring and preserving Vietnamese history through new artistic mediums. By capturing personal testimonies and historical realities, she expands the reach of Vietnamese storytelling, allowing the diaspora’s experiences to be witnessed and understood by broader audiences.
For nearly a decade the Vietnamese community has been living in free countries abroad and even within Vietnam, may have become somewhat familiar with the broadcaster Thanh Tâm. She is also the founder and director of the media channel Vietlive.TV in Toronto, Canada. This channel features very intellectual reporters delivering news highlights, features on social issues that are currently hot topics worldwide, commentary, music, arts, culture, politics, and more. The channel has been a very successful and is admired and trusted by the Vietnamese community.
In addition to managing the television station, a job, Thanh Tâm is a public figure who doesn't easily find peace with the diverse opinions of the masses. While she has many admirers, there are also those who envy her and political rivals who are constantly lurking & waiting for opportunities to harm and undermine her. Despite this, she has also ventured into the world of cinema, the "seventh art," a field in which, for decades, few Vietnamese directors have found much success despite the reputation of Vietnamese cinema. With the film A Realm of Return (Bóng Quá Khứ), which has been screened in theaters across countries in Asia, Europe, and America where mass Vietnamese communities reside, she has demonstrated her passion, dynamic effort, and talent as a director. Her films and her team’s artistic achievements have gained much recognition and respect within the overseas film industry, especially post-1975.
The film Boat People: A 50 Year Journey (Thuyền Nhân: Hành Trình 50 Năm) is the second film currently being shown in theaters in Canada. Naturally, we, the Vietnamese people, always look forward to enjoying Vietnamese films and are ready to welcome, encourage, and support Vietnamese filmmakers in contributing their unique works respect the art. However, in the field of Vietnamese cinema is still quite underdeveloped compared to the well-established giants such as Hollywood, Hong Kong, Bollywood, Seoul, and China. Looking back, even in Hollywood, aside from timeless classics like Gone with the Wind on the grand cinematic stage and the multi-episode television series The Little House on the Prairie, which are revered and cherished for generations, there hasn’t been a comparable recent production. By saying this, we acknowledge that all Vietnamese cinema still has much to learn in terms of theory, skills, and talent. However, innate talent is also a significant factor—some abilities are naturally gifted and may not be fully acquired through education alone. That said, director Thanh Tâm has already embarked on her artistic journey with two films: A Realm of Return (Bóng Quá Khứ) and Boat People: A 50 Year Journey (Thuyền Nhân: Hành Trình 50 Năm). These works serve as bridges for the future of free Vietnamese cinema, creating a path of growth and development of future Vietnamese filmmakers in the years to come.
I watched the film and felt that it wasn't necessary to take on the "job" of a film critic, meticulously analyzing every detail, strength, and weakness of the film. Let's leave that to the "experts" who scrutinize, comment, and highlight the valuable aspects, the beauty and goodness, and the improvements needed for future works to surpass the previous ones. As for me, I just want to talk about how the film impacted my emotions, thoughts, and what I considered doing after watching it. The film begins with the image of a young boy who seems puzzled and somewhat dissatisfied when his teacher tells the class that the red flag with a yellow star in the middle is the flag of Vietnam. This leads to the story of his parents' journey as boat people and their settlement in Canada. Through this real story, from real people, and the actual life experiences of this family, the film shows us how politics genuinely affect our lives. Whether we reject or accept it, it is still a political act, and we are influenced by it in every aspect of society and our daily lives. The best course of action is to become aware and make informed choices, as we cannot simply remain indifferent and escape its influence.
The purpose of politics is to create harmony among people living in a society, among groups within a nation, and among nations within the global community. The goal of politics is to peacefully resolve spiritual and material conflicts caused by clashes of interests between individuals, social classes, organizations, and nations, ultimately establishing the stability necessary for societal prosperity. However, the oppressive political rule of North Vietnamese Communists after the "liberation of the South" was a brutal form of governance, embodying the saying "harsh government is fiercer than a tiger." This form of cruel and oppressive rule was more terrifying than a wild beast, forcing people to risk their lives by fleeing, crossing borders and vast oceans, in search of freedom.
Cinema is the art of portraying life and emotions through characters and the actors' skillful expression, presented through flowing images on film, from classic celluloid to advanced digital technology with terabytes of memory. However, in the film Boat People: A 50 Year Journey, there are only a few acting roles because the past scenes from post-April 30, 1975, are brief but necessary to mention. It is also challenging to find actors in the overseas community who can convincingly portray the crude, unrefined appearance of an ill-educated village-school graduate with a ruthless, deceitful face and malevolent eyes to play the role of a "pure-bred" communist police officer. These officers, akin to a new type of colonizers from the North, came to rule over the “enslaved” people of the defeated South, whose level of education, culture, and dignity far surpassed theirs by a thousand times. So, the role of the oppressive police officer had to be omitted. Yet, most of the scenes in the film aren’t based on performances but feature real people, true stories, victims, and living witnesses to the tragedy of boat people risking their lives at sea in search of freedom during that time.
Vietnam, since ancient times, has been deeply influenced by Confucian culture, and Vietnamese women have traditionally been modest, gentle, and simple, both within the family and in society—often shy and mild-mannered. Yet, the young woman who were once on that boat, captured and raped by pirates, and extremely lucky to survive. Now, as she is advanced in age, surely with a family, children, and grandchildren, it must have been difficult for her to overcome her natural timidness and gentleness, to bravely appear in front of the camera. Even so, she couldn’t help but break down in sobs as she recounted the harrowing ordeal of being robbed and gang-raped by Thai pirates in front of many others. I would like to offer her a symbolic rose of compassion and human dignity, for that is the essence of our shared humanity. Her story is just one of many among millions of victims who perished, their bodies lost to the ocean depths. Oh, how heartbreaking, the pain that tears at the soul and reaches the heavens, and what bitter irony lies in the name "Pacific Ocean" (Thái Bình Dương), which means "peaceful sea"!
Director Thanh Tâm and her film crew skillfully employed geometric lines in the composition of the visuals, deeply conveying the emotions and circumstances that resonate with the souls of the viewers of Boat People: A 50 Year Journey. In the past, the poet Nguyễn Du gazed out into the distance, where the horizontal line of the sea met the horizon, stirring a sense of sorrow within him as he lamented:
This visual imagery, much like Nguyễn Du’s poetic lines, evokes a deep emotional response, blending nostalgia and the weight of the tragic journey of the boat people.
But director Thanh Tam and the film crew "spread" geometric lines in the composition of the image such as: Horizontal lines have the character of expressing a sad and calm state of mind such as: the horizon, the sunset on the river in the late afternoon... In this film Boat People: 50-Year Journey, female director Thanh Tam skillfully used the line of the sad sea, adjacent to the gloomy gray horizon with each wavering fierce waves and the lonely seagull swaying, wandering and fluttering, flying somewhere, the fate of the boat people on the fragile wooden boat floating in the stormy waves...!
The vertical geometric lines depict majestic, grand and authoritative scenes such as the upright trunk of an ancient tree, the pillars that defy the wind and frost and the passage of thousands of years, or the sacred monuments such as the Virgin Mary standing in front of the basilica with sorrowful eyes looking at the flock of lambs still busy with their hurried livelihood, the statue of the meditating Buddha towering on the top of a towering mountain of clouds, or the sacred tower of thousands of vertical steps standing alone in a lonely temple…? For female director Thanh Tam, it was her footsteps, and the film crew went to the place where the incident happened, the evidence of countless victims who died and buried their bodies in the depths of injustice and tragedy…! Now, in these places, only the limited height of simple, broken tombstones remains, and a few memorial monuments built by generous donors mobilizing human and financial resources in Australia and Canada. This is truly the spiritual height and the vertical geometric line running through the sincere heart of the Vietnamese community, not forgetting their compatriots who died in the tragedy of crossing the sea and border to seek freedom.
Oh, the curved, winding geometric lines often make our hearts feel poetic and romantic, like the curve along the lake shore, or the curve of the seashore? But with the artistically delicate eyes of director Thanh Tam in the film, it is the curve of the southern Thailan beach, it is precisely at this place that the journalist who is also a poet and writer had previously visited this beach, he saw the naked bodies of 12 young Vietnamese girls, with no clothes covering their bodies, their necks tied together by pirates, drifting ashore on a cold, sad, rainy day...! They were victims of Thai pirates' brutal robbery, rape, then a rope was tied around their necks, and their bodies were thrown into the sea.
(The poem powerfully evokes the struggles and dangers faced by those fleeing communist regime of North Vietnam after the Fall of Saigon, in small boats, highlighting themes of loss, despair, and the pursuit of freedom.)
In the Life of the Vietnamese People, Vietnamese Women, are the components that make up the whole, in the role of children, lovers, wives, mothers in the family and in the role of citizens within the country, and the position of women is very important to make the nation last forever and the country more glorious... Yet these Vietnamese women in the disaster of boat people crossing the sea, were robbed and raped by the barbaric Thai pirates, then thrown into the sea like abandoned animals floating in the cold, dark ocean, unjustly... Oh, the vast ocean is also the grave of millions of Vietnamese boat people's bodies sinking deep in that dark, blue water... The sea is still indifferent!
From 1975 to now, in the Vietnamese film industry overseas, only a few films have been shown, and they were not very successful, and often revolved around love stories, did not reach the peak of art and had to "die young". The film A Realm Of Return (Bong Qua Khu) by director Thanh Tam has just finished showing and is currently being evaluated by audiences. However, the film Boat People: A 50 Year Journey is a necessary mark in the Vietnamese community residing in free countries overseas. This is not the type of film to watch for entertainment in your spare time. The film is a historical testimony of the period when the people of the South were invaded by the Communist North Vietnam, they had to rush out to sea to escape and became a boat people disaster for many decades after 1975. Thanh Tam also followed the flow of refugees to settle in Canada, a suitable place to live, study, achieve results and grow like beautiful flowers blooming under the fresh light and having a little sweet nectar to contribute to life with a benevolent heart. Thanh Tam is luckier than the boat people who have sunk deep into the cold ocean! She has shown her talent through two films that have been and are being shown in many theaters.
April 30, 2024, will be 49 years since the day Vietnamese refugees from Communism arrived in overseas countries, the Vietnamese Community was formed, and the National-Communist War is still going on even though there is no longer the sound of gunfire... But from the beginning, when we were still worried about our family's livelihood, Vietnamese-language newspapers have been published and the literature, music, and cinema arts have also flourished and are gradually improving. In particular, the film Boat People: 50-Year Journey is a realistic historical document, a mark recording a painful and tragic process of the Free Vietnamese, and whether good or bad, it is still a "black ink" because of the nature of the pain of the people of the South in a harsh situation!
But it is truly a valuable heart-felt stroke written in the History of a Thousand Writers and the Culture of the Free Vietnamese, self-evidently revisiting the tragedy of the Vietnamese Boat People crossing the ocean with fragile wooden boats, without professional compasses and navigators who only had the skills to steer boats on rivers and streams, or to fish along the coast... However, for Freedom or Death. We risked our lives to go to sea and are now present all over the world, our Free Vietnamese community is growing strong in free and democratic countries. That is the price of Freedom and the priceless Flower of Freedom, the blood and tears, the bodies of my compatriots spread on the journey to cross borders and seas, making human love blossom.
We are grateful to the people of the benevolent countries who have opened their hearts, arms and doors to welcome us, giving us the opportunity to live in peace and advance. This film can be extended to include more victims who escaped from Vietnam that found safety in other parts of the world by helping to fund the director's trip to interview those boat people families. The film originally was produced by Ethnic Channels Group and Lunar Village Production, and with additional funding from the Canadian government (Canada Media Fund).
I would like to respectfully introduce the film BOAT PEOPLE: A 50 YEAR JOURNEY, the challenges and trauma experienced by Vietnamese people during the mass exodus in Vietnamese history. Which directed by Thanh Tam and her film crew, and it is currently being screened.
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