Escaping from Dreamscapes: On the Politics of Space in Films by Young Independent Vietnamese Directors

Escaping from Dreamscapes: On the Politics of Space in Films by Young Independent Vietnamese Directors

In the Vietnamese cinema industry today, state-sponsored (formerly known as revolutionary cinema) and commercial cinema (held by private entertainment groups) are the two cinema mainstreams that dominate the film market. The third, but lesser known, mode is a diverse range of new independent films. With an aesthetics of socialist realism, governmental cinema often shows less“dream”in the ordinary, personal, and secular sense. However, it often turns to grand visions and symbols that impress upon the whole community concepts like“a brighter tomorrow.”Meanwhile, commercial cinema follows the capitalist model of cultural reproduction, presenting pragmatic dreams about a prosperous, successful, and beautiful life to stimulate viewers to work, consume goods and services for tourism and entertainment, and accumulate wealth. Meanwhile, young independent directors of the 1990s generation in Vietnam today are deploying the cinematic language of black comedy and magical realism to resist the pragmatic consumerist and“land of tomorrow”ideologies of the two mainstream tendencies. In the movies of the independents, dreamlike and fanciful elements occupy equally important, essential, organic places. Dreaming becomes a way of escaping the politics of the space or the ideologies embedded in dreams of the future that influence people consciously and subconsciously. This paper also explores the possibility that Vietnamese independent films can create new narrative potentials and interpretations of people’s inner lives in the postsocialist era through a unique and anti-traditional cinematic aesthetic.