The notion of human displacement runs deep in Southeast Asia. Inhabitants of the region have experienced numerous episodes of migration: pulled away by natural resources such as those contained in its waters, driven off by force or pushed along the courses of rivers by war. Many have sailed away from its shores in search of safer grounds and a new home. The Vietnam War, ending with the Fall of Saigon in 1975, serves as a case in point with millions of refugees crisscrossing the seas in the decades that followed. With migrants, refugees, and internally displaced people making up a large part of the world’s population today, what can their journeys and memories tell us about current times?

Settling in a new home in a foreign land does not resolve the collective trauma of forced migration. Ham Tran’s Journey from the Fall traces the inexpressible devastation experienced by Vietnamese refugees in the U.S. as they adjusted to their new lives. The impact of the hardship they suffered was often bottled up in favour of American optimism, making it even more complex for them to process what they went through.

Everyday’s the Seventies by Nguyen Trinh Thi conjures up memories of mass migration by combining the personal with news footage, a firsthand account, and movie clips. The work shows the histories of the Vietnam War and the influx of Vietnamese ‘boat people’ in Hong Kong in a fragmented manner, exposing the gaps and disconnections between personal memories and collective and historical narratives.

Ham Tran (b. 1974, Vietnam) is a Vietnamese-American film maker and writer. His works often contemplate the Vietnamese diaspora and inform the alternative and personal histories of diasporic experiences. His well-known thesis film The Anniversary (2003) is an entanglement of histories, memories, hallucinations, and political confrontations with Vietnam. The film was shortlisted for the Academy Award for Live Action Short Film and kicked off Tran’s career as a feature filmmaker.

Nguyen Trinh Thi (b.1973, Vietnam) is a Hanoi-based independent filmmaker and video and media artist. Her diverse practice, which also includes sound installation and performance, investigates the complex histories of Vietnam and their entanglements with personal memories. Her works discern the displaced and misinterpreted histories of Vietnamese society.