Song to the Front (2011) dir. Trinh Thi Nguyen

This is the first from the intended “Vietnamese Classics Re-Cut Series” by Nguyen Trinh Thi (2011). The original film, ‘Bài ca ra trận’, was produced in 1973 by the Vietnam Feature Film Studio. Song to the Front abstracts a feature-length 1970s Vietnamese war propaganda film and its aesthetic and political elements into a 5-minute vignette. Set to Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, which represented a sacred pagan ritual in pre-Christian Russia where a young girl dances herself to death to propitiate the god of Spring, Song deconstructs the melodramatic and romanticized elements of the original social-realist drama. Playing with the original plot line in an ambiguous manner, the filmmaker desires an imaginative space for the viewer’s reinterpretation of the historical event and perspective.