Re: Russian Movies (or A Short Story of Vietnamese Public TV)

[AnHai Doan <anhai@cs.washington.edu>]

Hi Thanh, thanks for a very interesting article, you brought me back to 
the 80s in Vietnam. :-)

I attended high school in Vinh, far away from my family; and I was staying
for some time in a relative's house in "Quo^'c doanh pha't ha`nh phim va` 
chie^'u bo'ng Nghe^. Ti~nh", right next to a movie theatre called "Ra.p 
Cu+?a  DDo^ng". Needless to say, I spent a lot of time watching movies 
(freely) during the years 83-86.

> BTW, how did you get hold of these gems, especially here in the US? I think
> you can find some of them from backorder, but the prices are quite steep.
> However, for all of you who haven't watched them, I highly recommend these
> movies. Innocent, romantic and touchy pieces!

I'm interested in watching them too. If anyone knows how to get hold of 
them here in the US, pls let me know.

> We had movies mostly from Eastern countries (Bulgaria with "Tren tung cay
> so" which was a very popular entertainment during the first age of Vietnamese

Bo^ bo^'p, DDi a no^'p? Can't remember the names of these guys. One of 
them was supposed to be a very handsome actor.
Alas, I went later to Hungary and watched a lot of Alain Delon films, and 
found the guy was no match for Alain Delon.

> public TV after war, East Germany with "Dien thoai Cong an so 110" and a
> well-known, action-packed "Hong sung vo hinh", Poland with "Ruoi trau"
> va "Thu linh ..." 

Hey, remember "Tha^`y Lang" from Poland? Also a popular film.
There was also a lot of "u+o+'t a't" Indian films during this time, a lot 
of dancing and singing, hehehe. I think one of the more famous ones was 
called "Ti`nh ye^u va` gio.t n'c ma('t" (???).
"Nhu+~ng ng` kho^'n kho^?" (French) was also popular at the time.
"Gia?i Pho'ng" (Russia).

> by Sergei Bondarchuk), and I think some of you might have seen "Moscow
> Doesn't Believe In Tears" (Matxcova khong tin o nhung giot nuoc mat"),
> an Oscar-wining movies in '80, or "Mephisto", a yet-another-Oscar-winning
> cinema from Hungarian director Istvan Szabo. BTW, I personally don't like
> "Moscow ..." much.

I like "Moscow...". 

> >From the mid-80's some long series were first shown for Vietnamese audience
> on TV, like the extremely popular Italian maffia story "The Octopus" (Bach tuoc)

We were studying at Thanh Xua^n at the time. Every night when this damn 
film was shown, the dormitory was empty. Later, in Hungary, I saw this one
running for years on TV too.

> Before I left Vietnam in summer '88, other Western series were also on TV 
> which really captivated the public, eg. "The Thorn Birds" (Tieng chim hot 
> trong bui man gai)

Yeah, this was a good one.

Hey, perhaps we should talk about VNese films at the time as well; they 
drawed huge crowd during the 80s, not like now. Remember "Va'n ba`i la^.t 
ngu+?a", "Tu+. thu' tru+o+'c bi`nh minh", "Vu. a'n vie^n dda.n la.c",
"Xa Ha` no^.i", "Co' mo^.t ba`i ca kho^ng bao gio+` que^n", "La`ng Vu~ 
DDa.i nga`y a^'y", etc? :-)

> Well, I better close here. Just some nostalgy from a 26-year-old young man :)
> Hope you like it, especially those of you who grew up in Vietnam during that 
> probably primitive, but innocent time. I visited home two years ago, and I was 
> so sad to see the video rentals loaded with cheap Hongkong action movies and
> other crappy Western stuffs. The overall selection is wider, but the quality
> was probably worse, since little guidance can be obatained. 

Agree. Also, watching a film in a first-quality movie theatre is a 
completely different experience from watching the same one on video (not 
talking about taking girlfriend to the movie theatre, of course). As long 
as "Dance with Volves" can only be watched on tape in Hanoi (as the 
situation was in 92), we still have a long way to go.

Cheers, Hai.