Archives of Memory: Vietnamese American Films, Past and Present

Abstract

Vietnamese American filmmaking must be seen in the context of a community's diasporic formations. As such, it maps out a politics of representation that encapsulates the issues of community and history that invariably striate the ways in which Vietnamese American films and videos have been produced, distributed, received, and archived. This article focuses on the role of the Viet Film Fest, in Orange Country, California, as a major site for the archiving of South Vietnamese and Vietnamese American cinematic memory. In examining how this vital archive is shaped by both transnational politics and local practices of commemoration, Duong proposes its status as an archive of memory for a refugee community that wants to rectify how its members have been represented by U.S. and Vietnamese national cultures in film, both in the past and in the present moment.