THE BEAUTIFUL COUNTRY
Dir: Hans Petter Moland, USA/Norway, 2004, 125m, R
Bui doi, which means "less than dust" in Vietnamese, is a slur aimed at Vietnamese children with American fathers. The Beautiful Country, set in 1990, relates the odyssey of a young bui doi as he escapes Vietnam, endures refugee camp, and survives a brutal ocean crossing and indentured servitude with a human trafficking ring. Nevertheless, he manages to keep hope and humanity as he searches for connection with his long-lost American family. His quest leads him from Saigon to Malaysia to New York City and, finally, to a remote Texas ranch and a redemptive reunion.

Presented by Konrad Ng, Curator of Film/Video, Honolulu Academy of Arts and Mark Heberle, Professor of English

November 1 at 7:30 p.m. Free, UHM.

THE GREEN BERETS
Dir: Ray Kellogg, USA, 1968, 141m, G
Starring John Wayne, David Janssen, Jim Hutton, Aldo Ray, Jack Soo, George Takei, Irene Tsu
The Green Berets is the first Hollywood film to depict the Vietnam War. Heavily critiqued as propagandistic, there would not be another for an entire decade. John Wayne stars in and co-directs this pro- war film as the intrepid leader Colonel Mike Kirby, who teaches a skeptical journalist to embrace the necessary war. Kirby assembles his troops, parachutes into the bush, and defends Camp A107 from an
all-out attack. Then, he executes a "black ops" mission with an Asian beauty who must seduce a decadent North Vietnamese general so that the Green Berets can kidnap him.

Presented by Peter Britos, Professor of English and Film, UHM.

November 4 at 4:00 p.m. Free

GO TELL THE SPARTANS
Dir: Ted Post, USA, 1978, 114m, R
Starring Burt Lancaster, Craig Wasson
During the early days of American involvement in the war, a detachment of American advisors and Vietnamese irregulars is ordered by the high command to occupy an abandoned French outpost in order to
block Viet Cong infiltrators. When the VC attack the camp, the Americans are flown out by helicopter, leaving the Vietnamese on their own. Corporal Courcey, a draftee, and his commanding officer, Major Barker, volunteer to help them escape, but the break-out fails in the end.

Presented by Mark Heberle, Professor of English, UHM.

November 4 at 7:30 p.m. Free

COMING HOME
Dir: Hal Ashby, USA, 1978, 126m, R
Starring Jane Fonda, Jon Voigt, Bruce Dern
Coming Home produced Oscars for both Jane Fonda (Sally Hyde) and Jon Voigt (Luke Martin). Focused on the postwar trauma of American veterans wounded in the war, the film tells the story of a Marine wife who comes to love both a paraplegic veteran who has become an antiwar protestor and her husband, who returns from Viet Nam wounded psychologically as well as physically. The film ends with acknowledgment of the individual costs of the war but uncertain resolution of the damage it has caused for the protagonists and for all Americans.

Presented by Brian Cassity, Professor of History, Kapiolani Community College.

November 5 at 1:00 p.m. Free

APOCALYPSE NOW REDUX
Dir: Francis Coppola, USA, 1979/2001, 153m, R
Starring Martin Sheen, Marlon Brando, Robert Duvall, Frederic Forrest, Sam Bottoms, Albert Hall, Laurence Fishburne
Patterned after the plot of Joseph Conrad's short novel Heart of Darkness, the film follows Captain Willard in a Navy boat manned by four enlisted men on a top secret mission to assassinate Walter Kurtz, a Green Beret colonel who seems to have gone criminally insane. The boat trip upriver involves Willard and the audience in an increasingly surreal account of America's war in Viet Nam until Willard finally kills Kurtz and rejects the opportunity to replace him as a near god to his murderous followers

Presented by Mark Heberle, Professor of English, UHM.

November 5 at 4:00 p.m. Free

THE DEER HUNTER
Dir: Michael Cimino, USA, 1978, 182m, R
Starring Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken, Meryl Streep, John Savage, John Cazale
The Deer Hunter is the story of three friends, Michael, Nick, and Stevie, from the working-class Russian community of Clairton, Pa. whose lives are changed forever by Vietnam. The first part chronicles the camaraderie of the men during Stevie's wedding ceremony and a subsequent deer hunting expedition. The second part takes place in Vietnam and includes a harrowing Russian roulette game which the three are forced to play while prisoners of the Viet Cong. Michael's ingenuity and courage help them escape, but the experience cripples them physically, emotionally, and psychologically. Stevie returns home to a veterans' hospital, confined to a wheelchair; Nick is too traumatized to come home and stays in Saigon to play in the Russian roulette parlors; and Michael returns to Clairton but with a changed perspective that affects the lives of others. In the last part of the film, he returns to Vietnam to rescue Nick and bring him home before Saigon and the south fall to the North Vietnamese, with tragic consequences.

Presented by Glenn Man, Professor of English and Film, UHM.

November 7 at 7:30 p.m. Free

RAMBO FIRST BLOOD PART I
Dir: Ted Kotcheff, USA, 1982, 97m, R
Starring Sylvester Stallone, Richard Crenna, Brian Dennehy.
John Rambo, a traumatized Vietnam veteran, comes to a small town in search of the last surviving member of his Green Beret squad but finds that he has died of the effects of agent orange. Treated with hostility and persecuted by the sheriff's department, he reacts violently, heads into the surrounding hills, and launches a retaliatory war against the town and the authorities, including State Police, who attempt to capture or kill him. Finally pacified by his former Green Beret commander, who convinces the authorities that they are risking their own lives in threatening him, he is led away to prison at the end of the film.

Presented by Craig Howes, Professor of English, UHM and Director, Biographical Research Center, UHM.

November 8 at 4:00 p.m. Free

PLATOON
Dir: Oliver Stone, USA, 1986, 120m, R
Starring Charlie Sheen, Willem Dafoe, Tom Berenger
Taken from Oliver Stone's tour in Vietnam, Platoon won four Oscars, including Best Film in 1986. Chris Taylor is the new kid in 2d Platoon, Bravo Company, 25th Infantry Division operating along the Cambodian border. Sergeant Elias, Chris's squad leader, looks after Chris and gets him through his first ambush with a minor wound. Several encounters later Elias accuses his Platoon Sergeant, Sergeant
Barnes of war crimes. This splits the platoon, a tension that is resolved with the death of both men in unusual circumstances.

Presented by Brien Hallett, Professor, Matsunaga Institute for Peace, UHM.

November 8 at 7:30 p.m. Free

WHEN THE TENTH MONTH COMES (Bao gio cho den thang muoi)
Dir: Nhat Minh Dang, Vietnam, 1984, 95m, NR
When the Tenth Month Comes is a moving melodrama about a young mother's efforts to come to terms with her husband's death on the battlefield. Traveling to town to discover why he has not returned from the war, the protagonist, Duyen, learns that he has been killed in the line of duty. Unable to break the news to her family, she convinces the local schoolteacher to forge letters from her departed husband. Complications arise as the schoolteacher develops feelings for her. When her son runs away, the soldiers who pick him up reveal Duyen's secret. With the air cleared, the family is free to move on with life.

Presented by Pierre Asselin, Professor of History and Political Studies, Chaminade University.

November 9 at 4:00 p.m. Free

INDOCHINE (Indochina)
Dir: Regis Wargnier, France, 1992, 159m, PG
Starring Catherine Deneuve, Lin Dan Pham, Vincent Perez
A sprawling melodrama that tells the story of the latter years of French colonialism in Indochina, Indochine is told from the perspective of Eliane Devries, a wealthy plantation owner recounting
her story to her grandson years later. While serving as foster mother for Camille, a young princess of Annam, Eliane has an affair with a young French lieutenant, Jean-Baptiste Le Guen. When Camille falls
in love with her adoptive mother's former lover, Eliane has him transferred to a remote outpost. Camille pursues him, abandoning her mother and the plantation that is also hers. She fights against the
French, ends up in prison, becomes known as "la princesse rouge," and eventually is among the Vietnamese delegates participating in the Geneva Conference of 1954, which resulted in the end of France's
Indochina empire.

Presented by Duane Arthur Rudolph, Professor of French, UHM.

November 9 at 7:30: p.m. Free

REGRET TO INFORM
Dir: Barbara Sonneborn, USA, 1998, 72m, NR
Nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary, Regret to Inform foregrounds the humanity of Vietnamese women as it pairs their war-produced anguish as well as their hopes with those of American
women. It demolishes caricatures of the unfeeling Asian that Westmoreland proposed years ago, but that still lingers in American culture. Regret to Inform highlights common issues shared by U.S. and
Vietnamese women, but resists the temptation to suggest a sameness of experience between the wives of American servicemen and their Asian counterparts. As a film from a woman's perspective, the weaving
together of American and Vietnamese stories in Regret to Inform offers an intimate, powerful and alternate portrait of war.

Presented by Konrad Ng, Curator of Film/Video, Honolulu Academy of Arts

November 10 at 4:00 p.m. Free

SAIGON, USA
Dir: Lindsey Jang, USA, 2004, 57m, NR
Featuring Armando Peña, Faith Adiele, and Andrew Lam.
This PBS-supported documentary follows three Americans as they journey back to their ancestral homelands. Andrew Lam's portion presents the nationally renowned journalist and writer in a search to
find relatives that were left in Vietnam after the family fled just before the fall of Saigon in 1975. Returning to his boyhood home, he looks for and finds family members that were left behind but also
feels desolation, guilt, and a sense of loss. He recognizes that he is Vietnamese but realizes that he cannot feel at home in Vietnam, nor can he ever feel fully at home in America.

MY JOURNEY HOME
Dir: Renee Tajima-Pena, USA, 2004, 40m, NR
Saigon, U.S.A. is a documentary film about the political protests and intergenerational conflicts within the Vietnamese American community of Southern California that resulted when a shopkeeper displayed a communist flag and pictures of Ho Chi Minh in his window. The film uses interviews and other testimony from participants to understand and explore the attitudes of the older generation who are still traumatized by the loss of their homes and their homeland after 1975, and the younger generation, who imagine
their future as Americans rather than as exiles.

Both films are presented by Stephen O'Harrow, Professor, Hawaiian and Indo-pacific Languages and Literatures, UHM, with special guest, nationally renowned Vietnamese-American journalist and fiction writer in America, Andrew Lam. Mr. Lam, who appears in Saigon, U.S.A. and is the subject of My Journey Home, will focus his remarks upon how Vietnamese and American cultural values and historical experiences are reflected not only in the films but also among American Vietnamese communities in general.

November 10 at 7:30 p.m. Free

The Doris Duke Theatre at the Honolulu Academy of Arts
900 South Beretania Street (enter theater on Kinau St.)
For event information call: 532-8768
For general information call: 532-8700
website: www.honoluluacademy.org

"Best Indie-Film Theater" - Honolulu Magazine 2005