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Bass book? who is ba The first thing you need to know is that “ba” means “father” in Vietnamese. More specifically, “Ba” is respected writer and subject Anh Duong, as seen through the eyes of her daughter, filmmaker Ashley Da-Le Duong, the Vietnamese-Canadian director of this live documentary.
Anh Duong wrote the book Dear sister-in-law: Father’s memory of the Vietnam War and the Iranian Revolution (2024) for Ashley, whom she called “Da-Le” at birth, after fond memories of her wartime ancestral village located south of the 17th parallel DMZ (Demilitarized Zone) in central Vietnam. In the book, Ba’s haunting memories of the war and his buried emotions from that time on led Ashley to make a film about their extended family in Vietnam. The result is a hybrid film that captures the vulnerability of an individual caught in the onslaught of war and the journey of a shattered family rebuilding its bridges.
Inspired by the likes of Joshua Oppenheimer act of murder and Sarah Paul The stories we tellDuong uses a meta approach to connect past and present moments, using both documentary and fiction elements throughout the film. “It’s very difficult to write a screenplay. I’m not saying it’s not real, but it’s more difficult than reality!” Duong says. Instead of using a “cut” method, he and his co-writer, Steven Saich, scripted all the camera movements, lighting, and transitions needed to seamlessly transition the audience between the two time periods.
Unlike the Deep South and Far North, where political views followed their typical geographic perspectives, the Central Vietnamese often encountered conflicting political views during the war, creating discord even among members of the same family, such as the Ba’s. Their staple food, “sticky rice with beans,” takes on a much deeper meaning in the film. During the Vietnam War, many of the boys in Ba Village joined the North Vietcong but headed south at night to go home to their girlfriends. “White rice is our southern government, red beans are the Viet Cong. When they are mixed and cooked together, they become pink and cannot be separated,” Duong says.
After a near-death experience in a crossfire in the midst of war, Ba contemplated running for his life. To avoid the draft, he studied and enrolled at the Quoc Hoc School for the Talented, then went to Saigon to take the university entrance exam. The journey was long and tiring and his test results were not good enough. Fortunately, he saw on a bulletin board that the Shah was offering scholarships for students to study engineering in Iran, and his application was accepted.
Ba quickly left and failed to inform his family because Da-le had fallen in the north by then. By 1975, the communists had won the war. At that time, Ba landed in Tehran and touched the snow for the first time. Suddenly in 1979, after the overthrow of the Shah, life in Iran became difficult. Ba was attacked as a non-Muslim foreigner during the Iranian revolution. By then, Ba had long since finished his student visa with a passport from South Vietnam, a country that no longer existed. He waited for a response from Washington, but a group of militant students took over the US embassy and took all the staff hostage. Eventually, the UN refugee agency offered him an interview with Canadian immigration as a last resort, and he was allowed to enter.
Ba had never been to his village since he immigrated to Canada before taking part in this film. The haunting memories of the war may have been an obvious reason, but knowing how his Vietcong siblings would receive him at the reunion was certainly a factor.
In Canada, he was proud to name his daughter “Da-Lê”, which literally means “Wild Pear Field” in Vietnamese; It complements the family surname “Duong”, which means “sun”. Ashley’s name is a blessing from her father, who wanted his daughter to flourish like a growing pear, nourished by the endless sun. The duality of the name of both his daughter and his birthplace shows the love and longing of this exiled family man.
Like most children of immigrant parents, Duong’s career choice in art was not approved by his family. He recalls that it was only after his family “attended the premiere of my first feature documentary, swim timeIn Los Angeles (that) they saw what I was doing and they’ve been helping me ever since.”
Duong continues, “Steven and I went on several trips to Vietnam before filming, spending months just getting to know my family, listening to their stories, and figuring out who was relevant in which scenes. Some of the action is based on my father’s memoir, and some is improvised with elements; for example, the scene where my uncle shows the kids that we need the bomb.” Asylum, but the scene isn’t scripted at all, it’s more like my relatives helped make up the parts you see in the movie.
Shooting with relatives has its pros and cons. “Working closely with family, like my father, who is very strong-willed and opinionated, is very difficult,” she explains. “I want to include his opinions, but not all of them. There is a huge language and cultural barrier between me and my family in Vietnam; but since we’ve spent so much time together, we’ve grown closer throughout the process.”
reception Bass book The product turned out to be surprisingly simple. Duong recalls, “I worked with Ina Fichman, who is a very respected producer in Canada. We first came to Toronto for the Hot Docs forum,” adds Fichman, “At Hot Docs Square, Ashley actually cried when her father appeared on the screen. Everyone was very excited, but her interest was not only in the film. room TV Ontario heard the pitch and we got the deal, including Canadian Media Foundation, Quebec Tax Credit, SODEC, Rogers Documentary Fund and Hot Docs Incubator.
For the film to be authentic, the language must be Vietnamese and it must be shot on location. However, Fichman had this meeting: “One of the sales agents said to me, ‘Well, the whole movie is in Vietnamese, I don’t know if people are going to watch it!’ I thought, don’t you watch Netflix where a good 50% is in foreign languages? I will continue to support authenticity and filmmakers like Ashley and give her the tools she needs.”
Bass book Culturally specific, Ashley’s exploration of how we interpret reality and memory with emotional honesty will resonate with audiences across the board as it relates to families, the past, and connections to ancestral birthplaces. The film is presented as a celebration of roots, family unity and humanity. There is no talk of politics.
“I always knew that my father’s book wasn’t written just for me, and this movie was never just for him,” she says. “But maybe that’s how we appear to each other.”
Duong concludes, “I also made this film to connect with second-generation Vietnamese and other cultures who may want the same relationship their parents had, or feel distanced from family members abroad. Personally, I dedicate the film to my brother, who may not be as connected to Vietnamese culture, or his family, or his past, or my parents’ past as I am.”
