March 30th, Sunday, 5:00PM

Balagan Film Series presents:
Unidentified Vietnam No.18 (30 mins) and other films. 16mm film, 2007
By Lin + Lam
Director in attendance

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Coolidge Corner Theatre
290 Harvard St, Brookline, MA
Tickets: $9 general admission

In 1975, after the fall of Saigon, the Library of Congress acquired a collection of 1950-70’s films from the South Vietnam Embassy. Unidentified Vietnam No. 18 is a successor to the seventeen films in the collection labeled only as “Unidentified Vietnam, #1-17”. Lin + Lam's personal, experimental film examines the contested relationship between Vietnam and the US, between history and propaganda, between democracy and nation building.

Situated within the present, an archivist, film scholar, and South Vietnamese-in-exile speculate upon the intention of the war-era films. The filmmakers mine the material artifacts of the archive, fingering deteriorating film labels and paging through catalogue lists, and inhabit the past by re-enacting propagandistic gestures. Spectral images salvaged from a now non-existent republic haunt mausoleum-like hallways, reminding us of what remains unidentifiable in the process of recovery. Through these actions of retrieval and remembrance, the film ponders how US intervention has failed, and considers the dangers of its repetition.

 

Director Biography
Lin + Lam (Lin plus Lam) produce interdisciplinary projects that examine the ramifications of the past for the current socio-political moment. Informed by documentary and experimental cinema, Lana Lin’s films interpret different cultural contexts, raising questions about the politics of translation and the processes of identification. Trained in architecture, H. Lan Thao Lam uses photography, sculpture, and installation to probe the construction of history and lived places. Their collaborative work has been exhibited in international venues including the Museum of Modern Art, NY, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, the China Taipei Film Archive, Creteil International Women’s Film Festival, and the London Film Festival, among others. Dark Meat or White Meat? was shown at video_dumbo and LMAKprojects in Chelsea, New York.