Ysa D. Le is the current Board President of the Vietnamese American Arts & Letters Association (VAALA) and co-coordinator of the Vietnamese International Film Festival. She started getting involved with art activism in 2000 when she began volunteering for VAALA and ever since has been spending her time producing and co-producing events such as Dang Thai Son Piano Recital, Little Saigon Book Fair, F.O.B.: A Multi-Art Show, Cinema Symposium 1 and 2, and the biannual ViFF. Since 2001, Ysa has also been dedicating her time to hosting Vong Chan Troi Van Hoc Nghe Thuat (The Art Horizon) on VNCR 106.3 FM, a weekly radio program where she covers art and cultural events in the Vietnamese community. Of course, let’s not forget that aside from all her volunteer work in the community, Ysa is a graduate of University of Southern California’s School of Pharmacy and currently works as a pharmacist at St. Joseph Home Care Pharmacy in Orange County, California.

1. Your thoughts on the Vietnamese filmmaking industry? What is the financial and artistic directive?
Ten years after Scent of Green Papaya and Three Seasons, there is a new wave of Vietnamese Diasporic filmmakers, notably Ham Tran, Victor Vu, Nghiem-Minh Nguyen-Vo (Buffalo Boy), Charlie Nguyen, Luu Huynh. Several have won international awards. However, the filmmakers are still struggling in finding resources. The issues of the war and identity are still the main focus in most of the works you’ve seen; however, some filmmakers choose different themes such as Nghiem-Minh with Buffalo Boy and Charlie with The Rebel—well, at least for now. I think the war and identity issues are still the themes that many would like to explore, though it may take them to do so at a different time in their career. After all, this generation is very much influenced by the aftermath of the war.

We are still at an early stage to determine the success (business-wise) of these films. I’m very interested in seeing the release of Journey from the Fall nationwide in selected theaters by ImaginAsian Pictures at the end of March. Also, The Rebel will be released in Viet Nam nationwide and California late April. If The Rebel is successful (business-wise), I think we will see a trend of films made for two audiences (Vietnamese and the Vietnamese American markets). Extending to the mainstream and Asia is a strategy that I think the filmmakers always want to explore.

2. Has ViFF put together a program schedule for this year’s film
festival yet?
No, not yet. We won’t have one until early March. We will have two press conferences, one in Los Angeles and the other in Orange County, to announce our official selections. Those dates will be March 8th and March 14th respectively.

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