In 1977, an Israeli cargo ship nearing Japan spotted a leaking boat crammed with 66 Vietnamese men, women and children out of food and water.
They were among the hundreds of thousands of “boat people,” fleeing their war-ravaged country following the end of the Vietnam War. Despite desperate SOS signals, the refugees’ distress had been ignored by passing ships from East Germany, Norway, Japan and Panama.
The Israeli ship picked up the weakened passengers and took them back to Israel. There, Prime Minister Menachem Begin authorized their permanent admission to Israel, comparing their plight to that of Europe’s Jewish refugees seeking a haven in the 1930s.
What happened to the Vietnamese refugees, and the hundreds that followed them, in “the land of the Jews”?
In one of the opening scenes of the Israeli film “The Journey of Vaan Nguyen” (screening locally on Sept. 30), Hanmoi Nguyen, one of the original refugees, has been in Israel for 25 years. He works hard in a Tel Aviv restaurant, lives modestly, and with his wife is raising five Israel-born, Hebrew-speaking daughters.
The oldest girl, Vaan, is a writer, has served in the army and feels Israeli — except for her looks. In their classic up-front style, her fellow sabras keep asking her whether her eyes are slanted because she eats so much rice and if she is related to this or that Chinese martial arts star.
In the evenings, the father writes Vietnamese poetry and joins his friends in nostalgic songs about the beautiful land they left behind.
In Vietnam, Hanmoi Nguyen was the son of a wealthy landowner, and he dreams of returning to his village to reclaim the property and settle scores with the communist functionary who kicked him out at gunpoint.
He scrapes together enough money for the trip and returns to a land and a people he hardly recognizes. In a curious parallel to the Holocaust survivors who returned to their homelands to reclaim their old homes, he is met with suspicion and hostility by the new inhabitants and red tape by officials.
Even the hated communist functionary, like the Nazi bully in Germany, is now a nice old man who urges that bygones be bygones.
After a few months, daughter Vaan joins her father to dig for her own roots. She is happy that people on the street look like her, but has trouble negotiating the language and has no patience with the elaborate circumlocutions of social intercourse.
To the natives, Vaan herself has become a foreigner, and she laments, “I am a tourist, I am an Israeli.”
The agony of being suspended between two civilizations, without being fully at home in either one, is sensitively, at times heartbreakingly, portrayed, but the film by Israel’s Duki Dror (a UCLA alumnus) is not without humor.
One hilarious scene shows the newly arrived boat people being welcomed by an effusive Jewish Agency representative in Hebrew, of which the polite audience doesn’t understand a word.
Shortly afterward, an equally enthusiastic integration official tries to teach the refugees a lively Chanukah song.
On the reverse side, the returned father tries to explain Israel to puzzled Vietnamese villagers. He finally comes up with, “They have one lake and eat strange foods.”
The film, in Hebrew and Vietnamese with English subtitles, is presented as part of the National Geographic All Roads Film Festival, which will showcase various global cultures through films, photographs and music Sept. 28- Oct. 1 at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood.
Two other films, looking at Israeli society from different, and critical, perspectives, are on the program.
“Zero Degrees of Separation” by Elle Flanders, focuses on an Israeli-Palestinian gay couple, and a similar lesbian couple. Apparently everyone is bitterly opposed to Israeli government policy, or, as the synopsis has it, “The stories contrast the ideals at the birth of the ‘holy land’ with the reality of the country today — an Israel mired in the rubble of occupation.”
“The Last Supper — Abu Dis,” a short film by Palestinian director Issa Frej, seems equally disenchanted with present-day Israel. As seen through the eyes of a young Arab woman, the people of an Arab village overlooking Jerusalem anticipate the consequences of the approaching Israeli security fence, which, they claim, will cut the village in half.
All three films will screen on Saturday, Sept. 30, at the Egyptian Theatre, 6712 Hollywood Blvd. “Journey” will start at 5 p.m. The 26-minute long “Last Supper” screens at 8 p.m., followed immediately by “Zero Degrees.”
For additional information about the films and other festival events, call (323) 466-3456) or visit www.nationalgeographic.com/allroads.
