Thảo Nguyên Phan

In this emotionally charged contemplation on the glory and the tragedy of the Mekong River, different levels of real and imaginary worlds are brought together. Khmer folk tales, local lore and stories about reincarnation are told through vibrant watercolour animations and observations of daily life. Imbued with a sense of ecological responsibility toward the agricultural realities of the Mekong delta, they reveal a poetic but nonetheless biting consideration of Vietnam's troubled history.

Depicting the night shift of a young female worker processing cat fish in a factory in Tien Giang province, Mekong Delta, southern Vietnam, "Mêkông Mechanical" presents a day-dreaming journey of the worker, constructed from the perspective of the artist, who intertwines scenes outside of the factory with a single footage of the worker straightening the fish fillets in the assembly line. The footage is gradually slowed down, challenging viewers’ perception while commenting on the industrialization of food processing and its impact on the Mekong Delta region.

Tropical Siesta begins in a rural landscape of Vietnam. Very quickly, painted images of students sleeping on their school benches appear. A text speaking of how the communist regime has placed agriculture at the center of its economy reads alongside the images. The script tells of how children have access to only one book History of the Kingdom of Tonkin (1650) by Alexandre de Rhodes, a French Jesuit missionary. In different scenes, children interpret the stories of the book to escape from reality. The landscape of Tropical Siesta recalls the dark period of Communism during which many people were deported or executed— a history that was not written, the amnesia of a people to which the innocence of children respond.

The film opens with the fictional narrative of a Vietnamese-Khmer construction worker who specializes in brise-soleil, the concrete lattices for shading and ventilating buildings that, in cities like Ho Chi Minh City (before 1976 named Saigon), unite a traditional Vietnamese building technique with a modern material linked to US domination. The film’s second half, set during the 18th century’s feudal wars, centers on a folkloric love story between a Vietnamese medicinal healer and a Khmer woman that unfolds around the symbolic significance of a durian (or “thouren”) fruit, a major product of the Mekong Delta.