1969 Quy Nhơn, Việt Nam

Nguyễn Thị Xuân Hương

1949

Quy Nhơn, Việt Nam

Interviewed on February 11, 2022

by Hillary Nguyen

(Translated from Vietnamese)

The first movie that I remember seeing was Chúng Tôi Muốn Sống (We Want to Live). I watched it in Quy Nhơn around the late 1960s. Let me think, I was about 20 years old when I saw it. I watched it by myself. Typically, people watched movies by themselves or with their friends at that time. I don’t think many watched movies with their siblings or parents. To get to the theater, we either biked or walked. I walked because it was close by. The name of the theater was Trưng Vương. There were no concessions and no ushers. We just bought a ticket and went in. There was only one auditorium that showed one movie. We didn’t have rooms for multiple movies like in the United States. After finishing a movie, you could rewatch because it kept replaying. You could stay there from morning until night and see it multiple times. The theater probably had about 200 seats. It was divided into three sections, with an aisle on each side of the middle section. There was also an upper balcony area. 

The main character of the movie was Vinh, a captain in the Việt Minh army that fought against the French colonists for Vietnam’s independence after World War II. After Vietnam won in the Battle of Điện Biên Phủ, the French retreated from Vietnam. Vietnam was divided into communist North Vietnam and South Vietnam, or the Republic of Vietnam, in 1954. Even after fighting for the Việt Minh, Vinh became a victim of the communist regime. The Northern communists wanted to redistribute land during the land reform, so Vinh’s parents were denounced by the regime because they were wealthy and owned a lot of farmland. I remember that the communists dug a hole in the ground. Vinh’s parents were buried alive in the dirt and were beheaded with a plow. That’s why a lot of people from the North moved to South Vietnam. That’s why the movie was called We Want to Live. The people in the North wanted a new life away from communist control, so they had to escape and move to the South. I don’t remember much of what happened in the later part of the movie, only that the main character went with a group of other Northerners to escape for freedom, like how I escaped from Vietnam during the Vietnam War and ended up in the United States. Most of the people in the group were killed by the communists. Only two survived, Vinh and another person, maybe his friend or partner. The main actor was Lê Quỳnh. He was a famous actor at that time, and everybody knew him. He was the best candidate for the role.  

This movie was promoted by South Vietnam. It was produced in 1956, and it was free for the people of South Vietnam to watch because the South wanted people to know what the North was doing, how cruel the Northern leaders were. Actually, based on my perspective, it was a very good movie because it revealed a true part of history. It was true that after the war against the French, the North wanted to take control and stole the wealth of many Vietnamese people, and many people were killed. The land reform was called “Cải cách ruộng đất tại miền Bắc Việt Nam” and prevented people from owning a lot of land. Each person had a limit on how much land they could own to grow crops. My grandparents were rich and owned a lot of land in South Vietnam. Geographically, we lived in the central region of Vietnam, but the central region was part of South Vietnam. My grandmother was buried alive under the ground and was beheaded with a plow, like Vinh’s parents. This was during the time of the Việt Minh, when there was not a clear division between North and South Vietnam yet. 

This movie showed the plight of Northern Vietnamese people as they tried to escape the grasp of the brutal communist regime. It’s great how movies can capture a part of history, which we should look back on and learn from it. Little did we know, we would soon face a similar tragedy, but this time, escaping our homeland into a foreign country. During the Vietnam War and after communist victory in the Fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975, many Vietnamese people became refugees and risked their lives to escape Vietnam, with many perishing in the vast ocean. We escaped by boat, hidden under the deck and holding our breaths, hoping that we wouldn’t be noticed by the patrol boats. We battled the rough waves through night and day, not knowing if we’ll make it to land or if we’ll be captured by pirates at sea. Though I miss my homeland, I am glad that I had risked my life to escape in search of freedom, to have my human rights protected, and to forge my own future and a future for my children and their children.