Papers by Qui-Ha Hoang Nguyen
Feminist Media Histories, 2023
Hải Ninh’s The Little Girl of Hà Nội (1974) captures the traumatic war causalities caused by the ... more Hải Ninh’s The Little Girl of Hà Nội (1974) captures the traumatic war causalities caused by the US B-52 bombing campaign in December 1972 through the memories of a child witness figure. While the US media typically portrayed Vietnamese children as helpless victims, and mainstream North Vietnamese media portrayed them as heroes, the film presents its child protagonist as both a victim and care agent within her community’s care network. The essay shows that Little Girl foregrounds the caring capability of a wounded community by using care as a structural force and a central aesthetic. I argue that Little Girl produces an aesthetics of care, including visual and sonic motifs to inscribe the tender tone that underscores the images of the damaged city. In this way, the film shows that care has the potential to reframe the narrative of war while avoiding the dominant frozen trope of traumatic memories.
Stardom in Southeast Asia , 2022
A 1975 Jane Fonda article in Cineaste includes a photo of the actor-activist star and her family ... more A 1975 Jane Fonda article in Cineaste includes a photo of the actor-activist star and her family along with another woman, and a little girl (Georgakas and Rubenstein 1975). The photo is framed tightly in between the article's headline '"I prefer films that strengthen people", an interview with Jane Fonda, which is written in an extremely large font. A smaller subheading at the end of the page reads, 'Vietnamese actress Trà Giang and daughter, Jane Fonda and son, and Tom Hayden in a scene from Introduction to the Enemy'. The interview centres entirely on the already famous Fonda and her infamous trip to North Vietnam in 1973; no further information about Trà Giang and her daughter is provided. Trà Giang predictably yielded little attention from the US media in the context of the Cold War, given that Vietnamese socialist cinema was largely condemned as a mere propaganda tool, a view that has continued into the present (Healy 2006, 2010; Hamilton 2009).
Yet Trà Giang (Figure 4.1) is considered a legendary actor of the Vietnamese socialist cinema, associated with the iconic mother-fighter character in wartime Vietnam. A photo of her offering flowers to President Hồ Chí Minh at the 1962 National Festival of Arts (Figure 4.2) was widely circulated by the government, underscoring its cultivation of a close relationship between the arts and politics. Until the present, Trà Giang's name still invokes strong sentiments and positive public memories about the golden age of Vietnamese cinema (1954-75), even though socialist films have fallen out of favour in modern Vietnam, following the economic changes of 1986, known as the Reformation. Although she was the first star of the Vietnamese revolutionary cinema...
Southeast Asia on Screen: From Independence to Financial Crisis (1945 - 1998), 2021
This chapter examines women's mobility as presented in Vietnamese revolutionary cinema in its hey... more This chapter examines women's mobility as presented in Vietnamese revolutionary cinema in its heyday following the Gulf of Tonkin incident (in 1964). Focusing on Ngọc Quỳnh's On Top of the Wave, on Top of the Wind, it argues that this film offers a timely reflection upon the reality of fighting and the labour of the Vietnamese people in the American War. Through the film's spatial narrative and visuality of cultural and physical geography, the filmmaker conflates nation and home, blurring the separation of domestic and public spaces and creating a national/ familial space for both sexes. Yet while this narrative invokes patriotism and mobilizes women's participation in the national struggle, it also limits women's agency and subjectivity after the war.
This essay examines the ways that Tsai-Ming Liang makes use of everyday cinema aesthetics which f... more This essay examines the ways that Tsai-Ming Liang makes use of everyday cinema aesthetics which focus on the characters’ slow body movements and activities within private, uneventful and narrow spaces within cities. The aesthetics of everyday cinema allow Tsai to insightfully portray the urban alienation and marginalization of poor young people, creating a counter-statement against the mainstream discourse about the “miracle” of economic development in Taiwan. Tsai-Ming Liang’s aesthetics have left their imprint in Vietnamese contemporary art cinema. This article contends that while Vietnamese filmmakers have adopted Tsai’s film aesthetics, including voyeurism-based narrative and visual codes and motifs, they distinguish themselves from Tsai with their emphasis on portraying young immigrants struggling in urban Vietnam, rather than young dwellers native to the cities. The article suggests that Tsai-Ming Liang’s influences in terms of cinematic style and themes of social conventions need to be situated in the context of the rapid modernization and urbanization that Taiwan and Vietnam faced in the 1980s-90s and 1990s-2000s, respectively. In these historically and socially dramatic transitions, people became disconnected from their normal living rhythms. Tsai-Ming Liang's and Vietnamese filmmakers underscore cinema’s specificity as a visual medium to urge audiences to patiently observe the boredom of the characters’ daily activities in an effort to resist the rush of life and to nurture their ability to observe.
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Papers by Qui-Ha Hoang Nguyen
Yet Trà Giang (Figure 4.1) is considered a legendary actor of the Vietnamese socialist cinema, associated with the iconic mother-fighter character in wartime Vietnam. A photo of her offering flowers to President Hồ Chí Minh at the 1962 National Festival of Arts (Figure 4.2) was widely circulated by the government, underscoring its cultivation of a close relationship between the arts and politics. Until the present, Trà Giang's name still invokes strong sentiments and positive public memories about the golden age of Vietnamese cinema (1954-75), even though socialist films have fallen out of favour in modern Vietnam, following the economic changes of 1986, known as the Reformation. Although she was the first star of the Vietnamese revolutionary cinema...
Yet Trà Giang (Figure 4.1) is considered a legendary actor of the Vietnamese socialist cinema, associated with the iconic mother-fighter character in wartime Vietnam. A photo of her offering flowers to President Hồ Chí Minh at the 1962 National Festival of Arts (Figure 4.2) was widely circulated by the government, underscoring its cultivation of a close relationship between the arts and politics. Until the present, Trà Giang's name still invokes strong sentiments and positive public memories about the golden age of Vietnamese cinema (1954-75), even though socialist films have fallen out of favour in modern Vietnam, following the economic changes of 1986, known as the Reformation. Although she was the first star of the Vietnamese revolutionary cinema...