"Film Screening: Journey from the Fall (Viet. Vượt Sóng) with film director Ham Tran"
Film Screening and Discussion
Speaker: Ham Tran, Filmmaker and Director
Moderated by: John Phan, Assistant Professor, Department of East Asian Languages & Cultures, Columbia University.
Event Summary: Ham Tran is a celebrated Vietnamese-American film director, known especially for his 2007 film about a family’s divided escape from the fall of Saigon in 1975 entitled Journey from the Fall (Viet. Vượt Sóng). Journey from the Fall opened to critical acclaim, and won numerous awards including the Best Director from the Asian Festival of first Film, the Grand Jury Prize at the Amazonas International Film Festival, the Best Feature Film at the Anchorage International Film Festival, and the Grand Jury Award at the San Diego Asian Film Festival, among many others. The film is one of the only cinematic representations of the plight of boat refugees following the fall of South Vietnam to Communist forces, and virtually the only film to represent inmate experiences of the “reeducation camps” (học tập cảo tạo/cảo tạo lao động) that were opened particularly in the south of Vietnam after 1975, and which operated as late as the early 2000s. Additionally, the film is notable for having been completely financed by the Vietnamese exile community.
