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ARTICLES:
Eurasian Experience
Film
Review: Daughter From Danang By Mandy Willingham December 2002 In their compelling 2002 documentary, "Daughter from Danang," directors Gail Dolgin and Vincente Franco portray the true story of one Eurasian woman's journey from her small-town Tennessee home, to the Vietnamese village she left nearly 22 years before. The film is a series of intensely personal narratives and dramas. Most strikingly, it details the complex relationships between individual and ethnic identities; and family and cultural histories. It is through a contrast of raw truth and painful delicacy, that this extremely intimate and important story is revealed so well. The film focuses on Heidi, or "Hiep," as she was born to her Vietnamese mother, in the small village of Danang, in 1968. Fathered by an unidentified American serviceman, Hiep spent the first seven years of her life raised by her mother and siblings in Danang. Yet her life would soon dramatically change through the imposition of the United States government program, "Operation Babylift." Under the guise of "rescuing" Ameriasian "orphans" and providing them with the opportunity to live in the United States with adoptive American parents, "Operation Babylift" resulted in the separation of hundreds of Eurasian children from their Vietnamese mother's and families. In one of the film's most devastating scenes, Hiep's mother reveals the anguished circumstances surrounding the surrender of her daughter into the custody of American service workers. Beyond showing the immediate trauma of her move from Vietnam , the film details Hiep's 22 year evolution into Heidi: a personable young woman who describes her somewhat non-traditional childhood in small-town Tennessee. By the time she reaches high school, Heidi appears completely assimilated into American youth culture. Yet lingering between her scrapbook pages and prom portraits, there remains a secret her adoptive American mother warns her never to reveal: her Asian heritage. Following a painful estrangement from her adoptive American mother, a series of fortituous events leads Heidi to her mother and family in Vietnam. It is from this point that "Daughter from Danang" documents each step of Heidi's powerful return to her homeland and reunion with her Vietnamese family. Yet, just as the history of her story remains complicated, Heidi soon finds that reuniting, and coming to terms with her identity in a country she left 22 years ago, is a nearly irreconcilable challenge. After the initial excitement of her visit, Heidi is soon overwhelmed by the day-to-day contrasts, and extreme familial expectations of Vietnamese culture. "Daughter from Danang" succeeds as an intriguing, complex and challenging work. Its somewhat open-ended conclusion serves to raise more difficult questions, than it does provide accessible answers. Directors Dolgin and Franco compel us to consider those legacies of war that exceed the physical boundaries of continents and oceans. And finally, they demonstrate how less visible boundaries are constructed to shield our identities: often for the sake of self-preservation, and under the most difficult of circumstances. About
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