When Eric Nong visited the Viet Film Fest a decade ago seeking extra credit, the marquee of Vietnamese-centered films raised a lasting question for the college student: “Where do Vietnamese films fit in the ever-evolving course of movies?”
The question pervades, even as Viet Film Fest celebrates its 22nd anniversary this year, organized by the Vietnamese Arts and Letters Association.
The Viet Film Fest will take place online through Oct. 19, offering virtual screenings of 59 films — 47 shorts and 12 features. This weekend, however, an in-person festival will be hosted at Downtown Santa Ana’s Frida Cinema from Oct. 10 to 12.
Nong, now the artistic director of the festival and a member of the curation committee, said the event’s lineup reflects a diverse and evolving selection of global filmmakers and topics. For one, there’s been a “gradual decline of films that have depicted the war,” Nong said, even as this year’s festival coincides with a monumental date.
“Yes, it’s the 50th anniversary of the Fall of Saigon, but it’s also the 50th anniversary of the diaspora,” he said of the refugees who fled the war and have settled around the world, including the large community in Orange County’s Little Saigon.
And the diaspora is ever-changing. For the last several years of the festival, there’s been an intermittent rise in submissions of Vietnamese-Czech short films, Nong said. “Summer School, 2001,” the first feature film in Czech cinema to center Vietnamese characters, will be making its international premier at the festival this weekend.
One of Nong’s goals this year, he said, “is to expand the festival’s presence of animation,” to give the medium a greater focus.
The in-person version of “Drawn to the Screen” will showcase seven of the 10 animated shorts selected for the Viet Film Fest, followed by a panel on the animation industry.
Nong is also looking forward to the festival’s closing screening — a partially restored print of the 1967 espionage drama “From Saigon to Ðiện Biên Phủ,” with its original burned-in English and Chinese subtitles.
Filmed in Vietnam before the fall of Saigon in 1975, “From Saigon to Ðiện Biên Phủ,” is one of just a handful of surviving films in the United States from that period and was entrusted to the UCLA Film & Television Archive in 2018 for preservation.
For the Viet Film Fest, Nong and his peers on the curation committee viewed more than 100 entries, totaling a runtime of over 48 hours. It’s the second year in a row that the festival has received more than 100 entries. It’s a tough undertaking, Nong said — especially for a volunteer with a day job.
“The bad thing about being an artistic director is that I have to watch all the films,” he said. “But the good thing … I have to watch all the films.”
Find out more about the Viet Film Fest, including the schedule of screenings and tickets, at vietfilmfest.com.