QUEER VIETNAMESE FILM FESTIVAL
Director: Hoàng Huyền My
Length: 19 min
Language: Vietnamese with English Subtitles
Bộ phim kể về cuộc sống khó khăn của một "tomboy" khi phải đối mặt với gia đình và xã hội để được sống với chính con người thật của mình.
Who Are You / Bạn là ai (2012)
Directors: Hoang Do (he/him)
Length: 10 min
Language: Vietnamese with English Subtitles
Tu--a Vietnamese student currently studying in the US--identifies as a lesbian but finds the label insufficient in describing her body dysmorphia.
Tú (2015)
Directors: Nguyễn Huy Vũ
Length: 3 min
Language: Vietnamese with English Subtitles
A mother, her daughter and the journey to acknowledge the daughter's true gender identity.
The short film contains a short audio track with a voice of the mother repeatedly calls out her daughter's name, 'Bui Thi Mai Quyen - my little girl'. The voice carries a strong, unspeakable desire of the mother, to shape her daughter to be the girl that her name reflects. That piece of audio repeats throughout the film, lays under as the background for the very subtle journey of the daughter to reveal her true gender identity to her mother.
An Unfortunate Arrangement (2012)
Swanicorn: A Genderqueer Fairytale (2015)
Director: Jaq Nguyen Victor (they/them)
Length: 9 min
Language: English
An ugly duckling from the Vietnamese Diaspora grows up to be a beautiful swan. But thanks to a very curious queer otter and a very playful trans octopus, this swan becomes magically transformed. Puppets, forests, glitter, and sea build this cinematic bridge to enchanted liberation.
Directors: Nguyễn Bảo Châu
Length: 13 min
Language: Vietnamese
Công khai mình là người đồng tính, song tính, chuyển giới là việc mà hầu như bất kì ai thuộc cộng đồng LGBTIQ+ cũng phải làm trong đời, dù rằng việc đó luôn tiềm ẩn nhiều rủi ro. Và với bộ phim “Lam” chúng ta hãy cùng theo chân Lò La Lam, một người chuyển giới người dân tộc Thái, trở về Yên Bái quê mình lần đầu tiên trong trang phục, vẻ ngoài hoàn toàn là của một người con gái.
Lam (2015)
Director: Nguyễn Lê
Length: 13 min
Language: Vietnamese with English Subtitles
Hai người bạn thân đều là phụ nữ chuyển giới. Họ sinh cùng năm, lớn lên cùng nhau trong một thành phố, chung ước mơ được sống với chính con người thật của mình. Nhưng số phận đưa đẩy họ theo những con đường và ngã rẽ khác nhau.
Talking to My Best Friend / Trò Chuyện Với Bạn Thân (2013)
We Are Coming Home / Nhà Đối Diện (2015)
Director: Lê Mỹ Cường
Length: 19 min
Language: Vietnamese with English Subtitles
Centered around the love story of Phat and Khang, a gay couple living and working together in present-day Vietnam, this documentary shows the changing views of Vietnamese society towards LGBTQ relationships and people.
Director: Tran Phuong Thao & Swann Dubus
Length: 92 min
Language: Vietnamese with English Subtitles
Phong grew up in a town in the center of Vietnam – the youngest of six children. From the time he was a young boy, Phong felt like he was a girl with a mismatched boy’s body. Not until he moved to Hanoi to attend university at age twenty did Phong discover that he was not the only one in the world with this predicament.
His dream to “find himself” by physically changing sex becomes a reality several years later.The movie follows Phong’s struggle during these years, with excerpts from his intimate video journal, along with scenes from his encounters with family, friends, work colleagues and doctors – all of whom must come to terms with the boy’s determination to become a complete girl.
Finding Phong (2015)
Madam Phung's Last Journey
Chuyến đi cuối cùng của Chị Phụng (2014)
Director: Nguyễn Thị Thấm
Length: 87 min
Language: Vietnamese with English Subtitles
This verite documentary takes us on a year-long ride with an itinerant troupe of cross-dressing performers, led by Madam Phung, as they travel the remote southern regions and central highlands of Vietnam.
From change rooms, to on-stage performances, to time spent in tour buses, filmmaker Nguyễn Thị Thấm develops a remarkable rapport with the performers. They share their fears, expose their vulnerabilities, and talk about the challenges of being gay in Vietnam including employment discrimination and dealing with audiences who might just as easily throw rocks at the performers as try to hit on them during the show.
Adrift / Chơi vơi (2009)
Director: Bùi Thạc Chuyên
Length: 110 min
Language: Vietnamese with English Subtitles
Soon after her wedding, newlywed Duyen's excitement begins to fade as she realizes her young husband is not only sexually naïve, but overly occupied by his job and doting mother. As her marriage goes unconsummated and her emotional isolation grows, she reaches out to her closest girlfriend, Cam, who secretly desires her, but pushes her into the arms of a dangerous and provocative suitor.
The resulting sexual awakening and infidelity puts Duyen in a precarious love triangle, challenging her notions of conventional relationships and also the stability of her new family. Saturated with erotic tension, director Bui Thac Chuyen's sensuous and absorbing second feature traces the emotional and psychological landscapes of lust and desire, weaving an atmospheric tale of love and life in modern Hanoi.
Director: Quyên Nguyen-Le (they>she)
Length: 51 min
Language: English with Vietnamese Subtitles
The documentary follows the lives of three queer 2nd generation Vietnamese American womxn, navigating language, politics, and familial relationships -- their stories add dimensions to Vietnamese diasporic experiences in community organizing, family, work in nail salons, and living in Little Saigon, Orange County, California.
Queer Vietnameseness (2016)
Nước (2016)
Director: Quyên Nguyen-Le (they>she)
Length: 6 min
Language: English & Vietnamese with Subtitles
Set in the California Drought, Nước (Water/Homeland) is an experimental narrative short film about a queer Vietnamese American teen who attempts to piece together and understand their mom's experience as a Vietnam War refugee.
The journey pulls us into a fantastical series of iconic historical photographs, ultimately highlighting the complexity of understanding another's experiences completely and instead opening up possibilities for building relationships based on being presence and co-existence.
Directors: Sal Tran (they/them)
Length: 9 min
Language: English
Often times within communities of color, mental health issues are normally viewed as "invisible" issues that are reserved for the rich, white, and privileged. This short film attempts to put mental health issues back within our intersectional movement for equity within queer and communities of color. This film is my personal narrative as a low-income 1st generation college student struggling to be a "successful" full-time student while battling depression, anxiety, and PTSD.
Deconstructing My Depression (2013)
Directors: Việt Lê (he/they)
Length: 5 min
Language: Vietnamese, English, Khmer
Time traveling trans love-triangle.
love bang! (2012)
Love Man Love Woman / Chuyện thày Đức (2007)
Director: Nguyễn Trinh Thi
Length: 52 min
Language: Vietnamese with English subtitles
Through Master Luu Ngoc Duc, one of the most prominent spirit mediums in Hanoi, and his vibrant community, the film explores how effeminate and gay men in homophobic Vietnam have traditionally found community and expression in the country’s popular Mother Goddess Religion, Đạo Mẫu.
10% QUYẾT ĐỊNH (2015)
Directors: Đàm Thúy Hằng (Bạn)
Length: 9 min
Language: Vietnamese
Phim xoay quanh 2 cô gái tình cờ gặp nhau ở bến xe buýt, họ cảm mến nhau nhưng liệu họ có dám tiến xa hơn 1 mối quan hệ người lạ?
HaNoi Love (2016)
Director: Bùi Hoàng Long
Length: 10 min
Language: Vietnamese with English Subtitles
HANOI LOVE is a video series depicting stories of love and acceptance from the LGBTQ community and their families, friends and lovers. The series shows that people identifying as LGBTQ are children, friends and family members, who are the same as everybody else and should not be excluded from society.
This project invites the LGBTQ community and their families to a studio where they can open their hearts and share their memories about love. The footage is used to archive important memories.
Tết (New Year) (2015)
Director: Peterson Pham (they/he/she)
Length: 16 min
Language: Vietnamese & English with English Subtitles
A queer Vietnamese American celebrates Tết with a different outlook from years before.
