Journey from the Fall

Presented as part of Hear + Việt + Film, a Symposium on Music in Trans-Vietnamese Film organized by the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music. Register at cinema.ucla.edu to attend this in-theater screening.

In-person: Director Hàm Trần and composer Christopher Wong

Set in the aftermath of the Fall of Saigon, Journey from the Fall weaves together stories of a family separated, struggling for freedom. Like many South Vietnamese soldiers at the end of the Vietnam War, Long (played by Long Nguyen) is forced into a punishing Communist re-education camp. As his mother (played by veteran actress Kieu Chinh), wife (Diem Lien), and son make the treacherous escape from Vietnam by boat, Long’s own survival is placed in peril. Director Hàm Trần’s thrilling, award-winning drama, inspired by true stories of refugees, artfully defies the narratives often told about the Vietnamese experience. Aided by Christopher Wong’s powerful score and with a strong ensemble cast, Trần’s Journey from the Fall richly examines the role of memory and family in communities—and a country—built out of resilience.

(2006, dir. Hàm Trần, 35mm, color, 135 min.)

Taking place at UCLA during October 2022, Hear + Việt + Film: A Symposium on Trans-Vietnamese Music in Film is a multi-day event series bringing together scholars, filmmakers, and composers for a critical reassessment of music in Vietnamese film. Featuring lecture panels, film screenings, and Q&A sessions, the symposium seeks to bridge transnational as well as transdisciplinary perspectives on this global medium. It also seeks to raise public awareness of Vietnamese film as a site of translation that mediates between Vietnamese and diasporic contexts, a project that involves ongoing negotiations between languages, histories, and genres. The symposium also highlights the ways in which hearing the transnational contexts of Vietnamese film music requires listening for the presence of queer positionalities, both on and off-screen. By evoking these complex entanglements between local and global contexts, Hear + Việt + Film will reevaluate film music in a trans-Vietnamese context.