From book to film - how 25 years of experience inspired a documentary

I’m  lucky enough to have a job where writing is expected, even required to keep it. In the world of “publish or perish,” professors learn to do research and publish in journals. But after 30 years of that, I wanted a new challenge. A few years ago, I didn’t realize I’d end up with two new challenges, one quite unexpected.

Being fortunate to have worked in Vietnam since 1994, I know a lot of people and have watched them grow and change over time. It’s a group a colleague and I call The Bridge Generation, since they bridged timeframes from what their parents lived through to what their children take for granted. The group grew up in the 1950s and 1960s, during wartime and living the same types of lives that their ancestors had for hundreds of years. They weathered a long period of famine and rationing in the 1970s and 1980s before the government decided to start opening up to doing business with the region and world. In the early 1990s, as the market economy developed, this generation bought cars, built houses, and sent children to study abroad. This generation has bridged what their parents knew and now live in a global world that their children inherited. But they rarely tell their own stories. 

When the chance arose to do a project profiling some of the people in this generation, and even more, to work with a longtime friend and colleague, I leapt at it. Dau Thy Ha and I identified more than thirty possible interview candidates so I could learn more about their experiences during wartime, hunger and economic boomtime. Over two years, we interviewed people, visited museums, and reviewed archival material, films, and poetry. The result is nearly complete, a three volume set of profiles of Vietnamese whose stories capture some of the experiences many went through. 

The book has been exhilarating but also one of the more difficult I’ve ever done, for several reasons. I pummeled patient friends with my whining, anxieties and self-doubt. But we both  plugged away, and eventually molded and shaped the interviews into profiles and are now about ready for view.

Then, about a year ago, one of my patient friends who had read some of the sections and who has a film background made a fateful observation. 

“I can see this scene as the opening for a documentary.” 

A what? As she talked about making a film as a way to reach more people, Ha and I listened.  Then we (mostly me) resisted because this is so out of our comfort zones. In the end, we asked   “why not look into it.” I visited with a local filmmaker who had been to Vietnam as part of the Executive MBA program my university runs. We both knew and trusted him. When Ha said, “no question we work with him,” we signed on as novice film producers. 

And here we are: We to Me.

More soon.