Film
MAY/JUN 2006
Features:
Filmmaker
Othello Khanh’s
Rebel Heart and the
Sai Gon Eclipse
The Road to Creating
a New Vision of Cinema
in Viet Nam Today
High Kicks Into His Action/Drama The Rebel
Duc Nguyen’s Bolinao 52 and the Untold Story of the Surviving Refugees
Departments:
NHA: What's
up next for you and your film?
NQT: We've been working on trying to get more exposure for the film while also looking to produce more films focused on an international audience. Hopefully, an international distributor will pick it up and show it outside of Viet Nam. We just finished a marketing show in Berlin to get the film distributed. We've also been showing the film in various film festivals like the Santa Monica Film Festival. It'll also be showing in the 2006 Philadelphia Film Festival. I think it's a great film for the Vietnamese American community to see because it offers something different than the typical images of Viet Nam, which are mainly that of war or struggle.
Besides the film, I do some marketing and branding consulting with a few Vietnamese companies like Vietnamworks.com.
NHA: What message do you most want to convey to other Viet Kieu artists or filmmakers?
NQT: I hope that by reading this they'll get some sense of the creative possibilities in Viet Nam. What I found was that coming here was easier because there's a clean slate. You can do whatever you want. We couldn't have made this film overseas because investors wouldn't have gone for a movie with untrained actors and such a young crew.
With all of its beauty, there are still lots of stories to tell in Viet Nam. I urge all creative people to come back and take a crack at
it. The community here needs experience. If they want to collaborate, get involved, or even share or discuss an insight, but don't know how,
they are more than welcome to contact me. I'm a huge supporter of people coming back and doing something-anything creative. Once that starts
to happen, then it'll get really exciting.
For more information about 1735 km, contact Nguyen Quang Thai at
thai@liquidlinestudio.com, or visit www. liquidlinestudio.com.
Donn Garton moved to Viet Nam from Philadelphia in June 2005 and is the Managing Director of How Much Mobile, a consumer website available throughout Asia. He lives in Ho Chi Minh City.
Thuy Pham is a regular contributor to NHA. She works for the non-profit organization Room to Read and currently lives in Ho Chi Minh City.