Director Dang Naht Minh was born in Hue on May 11, 1938. He had two younger sisters. His mother died in 1954 when he was just 16. His father, a medical researcher in parasitology, died tragically in 1967 during the American bombing of Hanoi.
He studied in Vietnam until the age of 14, then in Guilin, China. He then went to the Soviet Union to study cinema for 18 months. Back in Vietnam, he worked at the film distribution center as a translator of Soviet films. He also translates Russian writers. Dang Nhat Minh is a polyglot and aFrench speaker.
Although Dang Nhat Minh is best known abroad as a film director, he is also a well-known writer in Vietnam. He has published his memoirs: Mémoires d’un cinéaste Vietnamien. These were translated into French and published by Presses Universitaires de Provence in 2017.
He began his film career as a documentary filmmaker in 1965 with Theo chân người địa chất – Geologists at Work, followed by Hà Bắc quê hương – Ha Bac Hometown (1967), May,Thang Nam, Nhung Guong Mat – These Faces – (1976), Nguyen Trai, (1980). These films were produced by the Vietnamese State Studios.
It should be noted the importance of the documentary film May, These Faces, shot in black and white following the capture of Saigon on April 30, 1975 by the National Liberation Forces. This 37-minute documentary aims to capture this historic moment on film, by filming the faces of an entire people reunited after 30 years of war. This documentary received the Silver Lotus at the Vietnam Film Festival.
In 1970, Dang Nath Minh shot the film Chi Nung – Miss Nhung with Duc Hinh Nguyen.
In 1974, Dang Nhat Minh adapted plays for the cinema:Nhung Ngôi Sao Biên – Stars on the Sea, then in 1978, Ngày mưa cuối năm – A Year-end Rainy Day. Both films were commissioned by the Vietnamese State Studios and are not Dang Nhat Minh’s personal works.
In 1982, Thi Xa Trong Tam Tay – The Town Is Within the Range was an 87-minute black-and-white fiction film. It takes place against the backdrop of the armed conflict between Vietnam and Maoist China from February 17 to March 16, 1979. Many border towns, including Long So’n, were destroyed. The film focuses on Vu, a journalist who goes to Long So’n to report on the destruction wrought by the Chinese expansionists. He is reunited with an old love, Thanh. He meets people with whom he has ideological debates, notably on China’s cultural revolution, the building of a communist society and national sentiment.
This film is his first truly personal work, influenced by Italian neo-realism. He portrays people in all their humanity, including a beautiful portrait of a woman. The Vietnamese woman would be the common thread running through most of his future works. This film won the Golden Lotus at the 1983 Vietnam Film Festival. Dang Nhat Minh calls it the richest film he has ever made.
In 1984, Bao Gio Cho Den Thang Muoi – When the Tenth Month Comes is a black-and-white film of great visual beauty. To bring it to fruition, Dang Nhat Minh had to go before the censorship board thirteen times. Selected for numerous festivals abroad, this film put Vietnamese cinema on the world cinema map. It was also the first Vietnamese film to be screened in the West after 1975, the end of the Vietnam War.
This film is an allegory of the courage of Vietnamese women during wartime. Nguyen lives in northern Vietnam with her little boy and a sick father-in-law. She travels south to see her husband. She learns that he and his older brother have been killed in action. Wanting to spare her ailing father-in-law further grief, she imagines, with the help of the village teacher, writing post-mortem letters to her late husband.
The film won numerous awards, including the Golden Lotus and Best Director prizes at the Vietnam Film Festival, the Special Jury Prize at the Asia-Pacific Film Festival in Hawaii, and the Peace Protection Committee Prize at the Moscow International Film Festival. It is ranked by film critics as one of the best Asian films of all time.
In 1987, Cô Gài Trên Song – The Girl on the River painted the portrait of a southern woman whose destiny was crushed by war, and who was forced to prostitute herself in order to survive. With the war over in a reunified Vietnam, Nguyêt, despite having rescued a revolutionary fighter, is sent to a re-education center. On her release, she experiences the disillusionment of a broken promise to marry her former lover in a peaceful Vietnam. Resigned, she marries one of her former clients, a soldier from the South who, like her, is of low status. The film provokes controversy in Vietnam. It won the Silver Lotus, Best Actress and Best Photography awards at the Vietnam Film Festival. It was broadcast in France on the Arte television channel in 2000. It is one of Dang Nhat Minh’s must-see films.
In 1994, in Tro Ve – The Return, Dang Nhat Minh portrayed Loan, a young woman teacher; Hung, an idler unable to support his family, dreaming of making his fortune abroad; and Tuan, Loan’s childhood friend, working in a Saigon company. Tuan marries Loan. Both lead an uninteresting life. Hung, under the name of Vincent Nyugen, returns to Vietnam to do business with Tuan. He discovers that Tuan is Loan’s husband, with whom he is still in love. Loan can’t stand living with her husband and returns to Hanoi to teach. Tuan meets her again at her school. Both realize how impossible it is to resume their life together.
In this film, Dang Nhat Minh diagnoses the evolution of Vietnamese behavior following the adoption of a new political orientation by the Vietnamese Communist Party in 1986:Renewal (Dôi Moi). The aim was to open up the country to the market economy without abandoning the socialist revolution. New industrial, commercial and financial opportunities opened up, as well as artistic ones, notably cinematographic.
Loan chose the path of education, culture and the transmission of knowledge, while Hung, alias Vincent Nyugen and Tuan, chose the path of financial enrichment, hence the rift between being and having that ultimately separates the three characters in the film.
The Return won the Special Jury Prize at the Sidney Asia Pacific Film Festival.
In 1995, Thuong Nho Dong Quê – Nostalgia for Countryland received international acclaim. It was selected for more than sixty international festivals and received numerous awards, including the Best Director Award at the Vietnam Film Festival, the NETPAC Award at the Rotterdam Festival, the Audience Award at the Vesoul International Film Festival of Asian Cinema, the Kodak Award at the Pacific Film Festival in New Zealand, etc.
Nostalgia for Countryland is a superb visual poem that takes a tender look at people.
The film’s protagonists, 17-year-old Nham, live with his mother, his sister-in-law Ngu, whose husband has gone to work far from the village in the hope of earning a better living, and Quyen, an attractive young woman who has returned from the USA to visit her native village. The heartfelt emotions of Nham, Ngu and Quyen are filmed with poetry and tact in this rural Vietnamese society where time passes to the rhythm of the seasons and agricultural work.
He was able to make this film thanks to Japanese financing from NHK.
In 1997, Ha Noi Mua Dong 46 – Hanoi: The Winter 1946 is a historical film retracing Ho Chi Minh’s key role in the decolonization of Vietnam. The film focuses on a series of events that took place during the winter of ’46. Ho Chi Minh, president of the Vietnamese Communist Party, attempted to negotiate the decolonization of Vietnam with the French government. This failed and marked the start of the Indochina War. Dang Nhat Minh and the film crew have endeavored to recreate the atmosphere of that era fifty years on, from the point of view of the Vietnamese Communist government. In making this historical fresco, Dang Nhat Minh was inspired by the film on Gandhi he had seen at the Moscow Film Festival in 1983. He wanted to show the complexity of history. For the casting, he set out to find the most credible actor to play Uncle Ho. His choice fell on actor and comedian Tien Hoi. Tien Hoi is known for having played President Ho Chi Minh some forty times on stage and screen. Tien Hoi does a remarkable job of imitating Uncle Ho’s voice and body language.
The film won the Silver Lotus at the 12th Vietnam Film Festival.
In 2001, Mùa oi – The Season of Guavas was the fruit of a Franco-Vietnamese co-production. In this film, Dang Nhat Minh tackles a page of Vietnamese history. In the 1950s, during the establishment of the Communist regime in northern Vietnam, houses belonging to middle-class citizens were confiscated for the benefit of high-ranking Communist Party dignitaries.
At the dawn of the 21st century, the film’s main character, Hoa, in his fifties, is still very attached to his childhood home and the guava tree adorning its courtyard. When he was thirteen, he fell from the tree and became mentally impaired.
Hoa earns his living by modeling at the Beaux-Arts. He is kind and helpful to everyone. One day, he sneaks out to see his birthplace and the guava tree again. This trespass earns him an arrest by the police. The police soon release the simpleton following the intervention of his sister Thuỷ. Hoa reoffends, but Loan, the young daughter of the current owner, befriends him and asks Thuỷ to tell the story of this house, which is linked to the history of the country.
The Season of Guavas, inspired by the life of Dang Nhat Minh’s wife’s family, tackles the theme of how changes in Vietnamese society have affected adults.
The film has enjoyed a brilliant international career, winning prizes at numerous festivals: the Golden Lotus at the Vietnam Film Festival, the Young Jury Prize and the Don Quixote Prize at the Locarno International Film Festival, etc. It has also been released in French cinemas. Critics have hailed it as a “poetic masterpiece” (Studio Magazine).
In 2009, Dùng Dôt – Don’t Burn tells the true story of Dang Thuỷ Tram, a woman doctor who kept a diary during the Vietnam War while treating communist fighters of the National Liberation Front in the jungle, from 1968 to 1970, when she died in the line of duty. The diary was found by an American military officer during an operation. He kept the manuscript for 35 years, then sent it to Vietnam, where it was published. The diary had a huge impact in Vietnam, and inspired Dang Nhat Minh to bring it to the screen, to show how, in the whirlwind of war, people are just its victims.
This war film won several national and international awards, including Best Screenplay and Best Cinematography at the Vietnam Film Festival, Audience Award at the Fukuoka Film Festival (Japan), …
In 2015, Dang Nhat Minh was approached by the newly-established private Khanh Studio in Hue to direct a documentary film about the 93-year-old French-Vietnamese painter Le Ba Dang. Dang Nhat Minh and his director of photography travel to France to make Le Ba Dang – Tu Bich La Den Paris – Le Ba Dang – From Bich La to Paris just before the artist’s death. The documentary is shown in Hanoi and Korea.
In 2020 – 2022, at the age of 82, Dang Nhat Minh began filming Hoa Nhài – Jasmine. It took him two years to complete, due to financial problems and the terrible epidemic of Covid-19.
Dang Nhat Minh calls this final film his testament. The film is influenced by Abbas Kiarostami, of whom Dang Nhat Minh is a great admirer. It’s a story about the lives of people searching for hope and dreams in the city of Hanoi. The film captures the essence of Vietnam. The film shows the lives of 15-year-old Duc and others leaving their hometowns to live and work in bustling Hanoi. The film describes Hanoi at the turn of the 21st century, and the solidarity that unites Duc with the film’s other protagonists in a changing Hanoi. “This film is about the Hanoians we meet every day on the street, on the sidewalk, with their joys, their sadnesses and their anxieties. I have to thank the Hanoians I met, who inspired me to make this film. In this film, there’s no conflict, no extraordinary twists and turns. It’s a simple film about simple people,” says Dang Nhat Minh.
Jasmine is the opening film of the 6th Hanoi Film Festival on November 8, 2022. It will be screened at numerous international festivals, including the Rome Asian Film Festival in 2023.
From 1990 to 2000, Dang Nath Minh was Secretary General of the Vietnam Film Association.
He has received numerous awards, including the Lifetime Achievement Award, the title of People’s Artist, the Ho Chi Minh Prize for Cinema in 2007, and the Grand Prix Bui Xuan Phai – for the love of Hanoi in 2023. Among the countless decorations Dang Nhat Minh has received, the prestigious medal of Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Arts et Lettres was presented to him on March 31, 2022 by His Excellency the French Ambassador to Vietnam, Nicola Warnery.
Dang Nhat Minh and the Vesoul International Film Festival of Asian Cinema:
Dang Nhat Minh and Jean-Marc Thérouanne
Vesoul International Film Festival of Asian Cinema was founded in 1995. The discovery of the work of Dang Nhat Minh, a major figure in Vietnamese cinema, came as a shock. His films show the reality of Vietnamese society in stark contrast to the stereotypes conveyed by the propaganda of the belligerents on both sides of the Cold War. Dang Nhat Minh has the art of opening the viewer’s mind with his realistic vision of the Vietnamese people, touching on the universal.
In 1997, at the 3rd VIFFAC, the film Thuong Nho Dong Quê – Nostalgia for Countryland won the Audience Award.
In 2003, he was invited to chair the Netpac jury at the 9th VIFFAC. Mua Oi – The Season of Guavas was presented as the closing film at the Edwige Feuillère theater, in front of 700 festival-goers sensitive to the subtlety of this film about childhood nostalgia.
In 2014, he returns to the 20th VIFFAC as guest of honor as part of the France-Vietnam year. He presents When the Tenth Month Comes. He was a speaker at the professional day on the theme of “Producing and directing in Vietnam”.
The VIFFAC logo is a cyclo on a camera. It’s also a bronze statuette, the trophy awarded by the international jury to the director of the best film in the fiction competition. The directors of VIFFAC bought a cyclo-cycle cab during a trip to Hanoi in July 2002. Faced with the negligence of the transport company, Dang Nath Minh intervened and the long-awaited cyclo arrived on February 5, 2003, the day after the opening of the VIFFAC. And so, thanks to Dang Nhat Minh, there’s a cyclo in Vesoul to look forward to at every VIFFAC!
The directors of VIFFAC returned to Vietnam in July 2003. It was a great honor to meet Dang Nhat Minh again at his home for a tea time. In the making of a film festival, there are those fleeting, dense moments of encounter with the masters of cinema who have the simplicity of the truly great.
Lecture given on July 4, 2024 by Jean-Marc THEROUANNE, co-director and co-founder of the Festival International des Cinémas d’Asie de Vesoul, during the tribute paid to Dang Nhat Minh at the 2nd Danang Asian Film Festival
