CAAMFest films show Vietnam War is still in our DNA a half-century later

San Francisco Chronicle​

09-05-2025

The United States marked the 50th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War last week, and judging by the scarcity of events and subdued mentions in the media, Americans have moved on from one of the most disastrous events in the nation's history.
But the anguish on Oakland filmmaker Tony Nguyen's face as he searches for the father he never knew in his documentary 'Year of the Cat' tells a different story. The ripple effects from a conflict that killed 58,000 U.S. troops and 3 million Vietnamese, most of them civilians, are still very much with us, and CAAMFest is helping make sense of it all.
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CAAMFest 43
What: The nation's longest running Asian American-themed film festival.
When: Thursday-Sunday, May 8-11.
Where: AMC Kabuki 8, 1881 Post St., S.F.; San Francisco Museum of Art's Phyllis Wattis Theater, 151 Third St., S.F.; Roxie Theater, 3117 16th St., S.F.
Opening night: 'Third Act,' Tadashi Nakamura's documentary about his father, Robert A. Nakamura, now in his late 1980s, a legend in Asian American independent film circles. 6:30 p.m. Thursday, Kabuki. Followed by opening night gala at Asian Art Museum, 200 Larkin St., S.F.
Centerpiece documentary: Rajee Samarasinghe's 'Your Touch Makes Others Invisible' which examines the number of enforced disappearances in Sri Lanka, most of whom are Tamils. 12:30 p.m. Saturday, SFMOMA.
Centerpiece narrative: Vera Brunner-Sung's 'Bitterroot' is set in the Hmong community in Missoula, Mont. 7 p.m. Saturday, Kabuki.
Closing night: 'Yellow Face,' Annette Jolles' filmed performance of the Tony Award-nominated Broadway play starring Daniel Dae Kim and Francis Jue, who are both also Tony nominated and are scheduled to appear in person. 8 p.m. Sunday, Kabuki.
For tickets, a full schedule and more information: www.caamfest.com
The 43rd edition of the nation's oldest Asian American-themed film festival run by the Center for Asian American Media, which runs from Thursday to Sunday, May 8-11, features a special section devoted to films addressing the legacy of a war that ended with the fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975.
'It's important to hear from those directly impacted by war and the aftermath of war, the refugee experience,' Nguyen, whose 'Year of the Cat' plays at 8:30 p.m. Friday, May 9, at the AMC Kabuki 8, told the Chronicle. 'To be able to hear the stories of what my parents went through, what I went through growing up here, the wounds that carried over to my generation. We're trying to unpack what happened in the past that has made us who we are today and to try to get into a better, healthier place for future generations.'
Like most Americans living today, Nguyen was born after the end of the war, but just barely. His mother, unknowingly pregnant, fled to the U.S. after the fall of Saigon and as a refugee was placed in tiny Seymour, Ind., where Nguyen was born in late 1975.
Now a father of two, Nguyen felt it was important for his family legacy to attempt to find his father. The quest — aided by DNA tests — took him five years, during which the filmmaker said he underwent an 'inner transformation.'
'I'm really blessed to have people on my mom's side of the family, and my mother, who allowed me to question her about sensitive topics. My family has really demonstrated what love is, what love looks like,' Nguyen said. 'There are good people in the world who I couldn't have done what I did without, whether it was the YouTuber that helped me out or various family members.'
'The Motherload' also features an immigrant mother and her offspring, but takes a far different approach. The narrative film, which screens (noon Sunday at the Kabuki) stars writer and co-director Van Tran Nguyen and her real-life mother, Sang Tran. The mother and daughter attempt to heal the rift between them by reenacting, often hilariously, scenes from classic Vietnam War-themed films such as Francis Ford Coppola's ' Apocalypse Now ' and Oliver Stone's 'Platoon.'
The clever movie is preceded by a short documentary, 'We Were the Scenery,' written and produced by poet Cathy Linh Che, about her parents, Vietnamese refugees who fled the war and found themselves in the Philippines performing as extras in 'Apocalypse Now.'
Together, the films explore how Hollywood has often misrepresented the conflict and the Vietnamese diaspora.
'('Apocalypse Now') has defined much of the American imagination of the Vietnam War, and so I wanted to add my parents voices into that space where they were not able to have a voice,' said Che, whose latest book of poetry 'Becoming Ghost' was published last month. 'As artists we are here to illuminate stories that have been erased and hidden, and as moviegoers we are also here to attune ourselves to these stories so that they can add to the fullness of our (understanding).'
Other films at CAAMFest that address the war at least tangentially include a retrospective screening of Ann Hui's 1982 classic 'Boat People' (7 p.m. Friday, Roxie Theater); the first three episodes of 'Our Roots, Our Power' (2:30 p.m. Saturday, Kabuki), a Southeast Asian American Journeys docuseries; 'Cu Li Never Cries' (3 p.m. Saturday, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art's Phyllis Wattis Theater); and 'New Wave' (3 p.m. Sunday, Phyllis Wattis Theater), Elizabeth Ai's documentary about a music movement that helped Vietnamese American teens in the 1980s process the trauma of the refugee experience.