Vietnam - Here and There

Vietnam - Here and There

Explore Vietnam with this collection of films. You’ll find Nguyễn Thị Thấm’s verite documentary “Madam Phung's Last Journey” about a former monk who becomes a guiding hand to a largely transgender troupe and “Which Way is East,” Lynne Sachs’ travel diary turned political discourse on Vietnam.

There are also multiple films on the Vietnam war from “Time of the Locust,” one of the earliest documentaries against it, to “Far from Vietnam,” the epic 1967 collaboration between cinema greats Jean-Luc Godard, Joris Ivens, William Klein, Claude Lelouch, Chris Marker, and Alain Resnais in protest of American military involvement in Vietnam. There’s also “Investigation of a Flame,” a documentary about the political movement against the war in the U.S., as well as explorations of the war’s long-term effects and legacy on veterans in “Agent Orange” and “Stray Dog.”

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Vietnam - Here and There
  • Winter Soldier

    Directed by Winterfilm Collective • Documentary • With John Kerry • 1972 • 96 minutes

    In February 1971, one month after the revelations of the My Lai massacre, a public inquiry into war crimes committed by American forces in Vietnam was held at a Howard Johnson motel in Detroit. The Vietnam Vete...

  • Kent State: The Day the War Came Home

    Directed by Chris Triffo • Documentary • 2000 • 48 minutes

    The definitive story of the Kent State shootings is told here for the first time. The haunting photograph of Mary Vecchio poised in anguish over the body of a slain student. The fervor of the wounded student activist still consumed by th...

  • Berkeley in the Sixties

    Directed by Mark Kitchell • Documentary • With Ronald Reagan, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Mario Savio, Huey Newton, Allen Ginsberg, The Grateful Dead, Jimi Hendrix • 1990 • 117 minutes

    Berkeley in the Sixties recaptures the exhilaration and turmoil of the unprecedented student protests that sha...

  • Far from Vietnam

    Directed by Jean-Luc Godard, Joris Ivens, William Klein, Claude Lelouch, Chris Marker, and Alain Resnais • Documentary • 1967 • 115 minutes

    Initiated and edited by Chris Marker, FAR FROM VIETNAM is an epic 1967 collaboration between cinema greats Jean-Luc Godard, Joris Ivens, William Klein, Clau...

  • Agent Orange

    Directed by Masako Sakata • Documentary • 2007 • 66 minutes

    As a young man in the late Sixties, Greg Davis served for three years in the U.S. Army in Vietnam. The area where he was stationed was one of many throughout the country sprayed by the military, as part of its counterinsurgency strategy...

  • Madam Phung's Last Journey

    Directed by Nguyễn Thị Thấm • Documentary • 2014 • 87 minutes

    A former monk who left monastic life because 'I saw beautiful fags praying, and felt like running away,' Madam Phung is a canny businesswoman who got her start as a singer, and saved her money in the form of gold bars she would bury i...

  • The 317th Platoon

    Directed by Pierre Schoendoerffer • Drama • With Jacques Perrin, Bruno Cremer, Pierre Fabre • 1965 • 95 minutes

    1954. The dying days of the French war in Indochina. As the battle of Diên Biên Phu rages, the 317th platoon of the French Far East Expeditionary Corps are ordered to destroy their bas...

  • Dateline - Saigon

    Directed by Thomas D. Herman • Documentary • With David Halberstam, Neil Sheehan, Malcolm Browne, Peter Arnett, Horst Faas, Sam Waterston • 2019 • 96 minutes

    Southeast Asia, 1960's. Flash point of the Cold War. Dateline-Saigon tells the inspiring story of a small group of Pulitzer Prize-winning ...

  • A Grin Without a Cat

    Directed by Chris Marker • Documentary • 1977 • 178 minutes

    Newly restored! A GRIN WITHOUT A CAT is Chris Marker's epic film-essay on the worldwide political wars of the 60's and 70's: Vietnam, Bolivia, May '68, Prague, Chile, and the fate of the New Left.

    Released in France in 1978, restored a...

  • The Trials of Henry Kissinger

    Directed by Eugene Jarecki • Documentary • With Henry Kissinger, Brian Cox, Amy Goodman, Alexander Haig, William Safire, Seymour Hersh • 2002 • 80 minutes

    Featuring previously unseen footage, de-classified documents, and revealing interviews with Kissinger supporters (Alexander Haig, Brent Scowc...

  • David Holzman's Diary

    Directed by Jim McBride • Drama • With Eileen Dietz, Kit Carson • 1967 • 73 minutes

    David Holzman's Diary is one of the most influential films of the 1960s, an "ingenious puzzle movie" (Dave Kehr, Chicago Reader) that charts the self-destruction of a media-saturated youth. As news from the Viet...

  • Sad Song of Yellow Skin

    Directed by Michael Rubbo • Documentary • 1971 • 58 minutes

    A film about the people of Saigon as seen through the experiences of three young American journalists who, in 1970, explored in their own way the consequences of war and of the American presence. It is not a film about the Vietnam war, ...

  • Stray Dog

    Directed by Debra Granik • Documentary • 2016 • 102 minutes

    From Debra Granik, director of the Oscar-nominated 'Winter's Bone', comes this portrait of a motorcycle-riding, freedom-loving, Vietnam veteran cast in the mold of an outlaw biker. But there's much more to burly, bearded Ronnie 'Stray D...

  • Seadrift

    Directed by Tim Tsai • Documentary • With The Nguyen, Bang "Cherry" Nguyen, Steve Pham, Ron Galloway, Diane Wilson, Beth Aplin-Martin • 2019 • 69 minutes

    In 1979, a Vietnamese refugee shoots and kills a white crab fisherman at the public town docks in Seadrift, TX. What began as a dispute over f...

  • Le Crabe-Tambour

    Directed by Pierre Schoendoerffer • Drama • With Jean Rochefort, Jacques Perrin, Claude Rich, Jacques Dufilho • 1977 • 120 minutes

    A French naval frigate crosses the Atlantic, bringing supplies and medical care to the French fishing fleet off the Grand Banks of Newfoundland. On board are three v...

  • Do You Remember Vietnam?

    Directed by David I. Munro • Documentary • 2006 • 52 minutes

    In 1978, three years after the fall of Saigon, John Pilger went back to Vietnam to find out what had happened under the new regime.

    He talks with a young tour guide at a war crimes museum, who had been imprisoned in the infamous US ti...

  • Investigation of a Flame

    Directed by Lynne Sachs • Documentary • With Daniel Berrigan, Philip Berrigan • 2001 • 45 minutes

    "Our apologies, good friends, for the fracture of good order, the burning of paper instead of children, the angering of the orderlies in the front parlor of the charnel house... The time is past whe...

  • Last Summer Won't Happen

    Directed by Peter Gessner & Tom Hurwitz • Documentary • With Abbie Hoffman, Paul Krassner, Tom Osha Neuman, Phil Ochs • 2002 • 58 minutes

    Shot in 1968, one year after the Summer of Love, LAST SUMMER WON'T HAPPEN is a critical yet sympathetic examination of the anti-war movement in New York City....

  • Sir! No Sir!

    Directed by David Zeiger • Documentary • 2006 • 84 minutes

    In the 1960's an anti-war movement emerged that altered the course of history. This movement didn't take place on college campuses, but in barracks and on aircraft carriers. It flourished in army stockades, navy brigs and in the dingy to...

  • The Sixth Side of the Pentagon

    Directed by Chris Marker & François Reichenbach • Documentary • 1967 • 26 minutes

    "If the five sides of the pentagon appear impregnable, attack the sixth side."— Zen proverb

    On October 21, 1967, over 100,000 protestors gathered in Washington, D.C., for the Mobilization to End the War in Vietnam...

  • Time of the Locust

    Directed by Peter Gessner • Documentary • 1966 • 13 minutes

    Compiled from American news film, Vietnamese National Liberation Front combat footage, and unreleased material filmed by Japanese Television camera units, this now classic film by Peter Gessner provides one of the strongest treatises ag...

  • Which Way Is East: Notebooks from Vietnam

    Directed by Lynne Sachs • Documentary • 1994 • 33 minutes

    When two American sisters travel north from Ho Chi Minh City to Hanoi, conversations with Vietnamese strangers and friends reveal to them the flip side of a shared history. Lynne and Dana Sachs' travel diary of their trip to Vietnam is a ...