vietnam movies

Vietnam the Movie uses a carefully structured montage of clips from drama and documentary films to give a chronological account of Vietnamese history from the mid-1950s to the late 1970s, encompassing the end of French colonialism and America’s involvement in the Vietnam War. But this is no conventional history lesson. Rather, the excerpts chosen contrast a variety of external and often oppositional views, ranging from mainstream Hollywood drama to European art-house. Source material from the US includes Apocalypse Now, Born on the Fourth of July and Forrest Gump, whilst Europe is represented by the works of Harun Farocki, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Werner Herzog and Jean-Luc Godard. The result suggests that any ‘true’ picture of Vietnam has been lost to the multiplicity of symbolic purposes to which the country, its people and their tribulations have been put.

Vietnam will be free is a chamber film that tells of a war, of memory that fades, of a challenge against the passing of time. Two shoeboxes full of 6x6 photographic negatives, forgotten in an old wardrobe in the attic for over fifty years, have been unexpectedly rediscovered. In 1964-65 the directors Lino Del Fra and Cecilia Mangini lived for three months in North Vietnam at war with the U.S.A. to carry out inspections for a documentary film about the struggle of that people determined to conquer unity and independence. From the border with China to the border with the South, the US-based and actually occupied by the Americans, they explored the cities, ports, countries, rice fields, and war fronts. [...] (https://www.filmitalia.org/p.aspx?t=film&l=en&did=121956)

This documentary film comprises of interviews with five Vietnam War veterans in 1982 in prison for violent crimes committed after leaving the military, interwoven with film and television clips from the period. All five interviewed were decorated for bravery and none of the five men had a criminal record prior to going to Vietnam.

A documentary on the war in South Vietnam shot entirely on location. There is no narration and no use of archive footage. The participants speak for themselves. The filmmakers spend time with units from many services: army, tanks, marines, ARVN, air cavalry. They accompany an air force napalm and strafing attack on a Viet Cong bunker complex. There are many scenes both of Saigon streets and of peasant village life. Soldiers speak of their experiences and their mission to fight Communism in Vietnam. One American informant says that the Vietnamese peasant is not interested in ideology, but in social justice, a piece of land, fair taxation, and to be left alone. Some interviews are used as voice-over. Participants, American and Vietnamese, are very natural, with little or no posturing for the camera. There are scenes of dead Viet Cong, and one showing a VC suspect being drowned to aid interrogation.