A long and winding 'Journey'
Six years of hard work, dedication leads to fulfillment, accolades for director
Joe Nguyen, editor
May 25, 2007

Photo courtesy of Imaginasian Pictures Vietnamese-American director Ham Tran on the set of his film, "Journey from the Fall." The movie will be the opening film at the 10th Aurora Asian Film Festival and plays at 7 p.m. May 31.

There are some incredible stories that become lost in history. Ham Tran is trying to preserve one.

Six years ago, the Vietnamese-American director set out to create a film about the plight of his people after the fall of Saigon. It’s a tale of the “Journey from the Fall.”

“It's one of those things, where if you grew up in the Vietnamese community you know that by heart because it happened to your family members or it happened to you,” Tran said.

He drew from the experiences of his aunts and uncles, who were known as “boat people” because they packed into a small vessel and traveled across the ocean in search of refuge. In fact, many members of the cast and crew shared stories that helped contribute to the film. Tran said his producer’s father was executed in a communist re-education camp and the executive producer’s father was in a re-education camp for 13 years.

“It's one of those things that's very personal to the community,” he said, “but has been neglected all these years.”

Early on, Tran made some valuable allies. He said when “Journey from the Fall” was still being thought up as a short film, veteran actors Kieu Chinh (“The Joy Luck Club”) and Long Nguyen (“Green Dragon”) signed on.

“Kieu Chinh was incredible,” he said. “With her participation, she was there to back us up. She was there to say, ‘I believe in this filmmaker and so should you.’”

In September 2004, Tran began shooting the movie. Filming took 10 weeks and the crew rushed to finish it by April 30, 2005, to commemorate the 30-year anniversary of the fall of Saigon.

“The sound was terrible,” he said about the rough cut version that was shown. “It was unmixed, undesigned. (But) we needed to show it to the community because we just thought, this is 30 years and we needed to commemorate it with something that the community can all go to one place and watch, and take some of the history.”

The film was finally completed in October 2005 and it found a distributor a year later. “Journey from the Fall” has won numerous accolades in film festivals around the worlds, but there’s one country where he wants it to play.

“I really hope the film can be shown in Vietnam,” Tran said, “but because of the subject matter, the government will probably never allow the film to be shown publicly.”

Despite the government’s disapproval, he said he has heard that many have attained pirated copies of the film. It is disheartening news for the director.

“It's a shame that the community, after 30 years, having for the first time a film that talks about their experience, why would they even pirate it?” Tran said. “ … If you can't even support your own people trying to tell your story, then how are we as a community going to rise?”

He said that there’s a renaissance in Vietnamese filmmaking happening today. New directors, such as Truc “Charlie” Nguyen who directed the Vietnamese action-drama “The Rebel,” are creating entertaining and thought-provoking films. But it’s the support of the community that takes them to the next level.

“That recognition comes from sales, it comes from the fact that we want Hollywood to go, ‘Holy Cow, look at how much this Vietnamese film made,’” he said, “so that they'll put more money into Vietnamese filmmaking.”

It’s this support that has helped elevate Tran to where he is today, and it is this support that will help him continue to make movies in the future.

Joe Nguyen is the editor in chief for AsiaXpress.com. Joe can be contacted via e-mail at joe@asiaxpress.com.