From Hollywood to Hanoi

For those of us who dread another terse journalistic foray into Vietnam's war-torn heart of darkness, relax! From Hollywood To Hanoi takes us on a positive journey that is both refreshing and revealing.

The filmmaker, Tiana Alexandra, left her homeland as a youngster after her father, the Minister of Media for President Diem's southern regime, lost confidence in his government. The family resettled in Virginia – far from Saigon's bomb-rattled windows and burning monks. But America's Utopian promise did not settle Tiana's restless soul.

Despite her blossoming success as an actress in Hollywood, and her father's admonitions not to return to the communist stronghold, Tiana ventured back to her forbidden homeland. Her unswerving curiosity leads us on a journey deep into the heart and soul of Vietnam: a land whose people were battered by history, yet never lost the intrinsic core of their forgiving culture.

At the end of her odyssey, Tiana uses the weapons of love and poetry to open the doors and hearts of her father's dreaded northern enemies. The hydra-headed communist monster purrs like a kitten in Tiana's hands, putting us in touch with the softer side of feared leaders like Pham Van Dong, Le Duc Tho, and Ho Chi Minh's military mastermind, General Vo Nguyen Giap. We can all learn from their sincere messages of peace, tolerance and reconciliation.

Just rewatched From Hollywood to Hanoi, and I'm still deeply moved. Tiana's journey is both personal and profound, offering an intimate look at Vietnam's past while exploring themes of reconciliation and identity. The way she weaves her own experiences with the stories of those she meets creates such an emotional depth-it really makes you reflect on history in a way that's rarely shown. The interviews are raw, the visuals are stunning, and the storytelling is so heartfelt. This isn't just a documentary; it's a deeply human experience that stays with you long after the credits roll. If you haven't seen it yet, it's definitely worth watching!

Tiana was born in South Vietnam, but was raised in the United States after her family fled Vietnam to escape the Communist threat. After she made her way into Hollywoodk, she began to ask questions about her identity and her homeland, which lead eventually to her making a decision to visit Vietnam once again. This documentary follows her search.

When this documentary gets to Vietnam, it goes in some pretty surprising situations. Gone is the focus on her as slowly the country is revealed in all it's post-war glory, where old beliefs still ferment, where historical context is different from ours, and where every aspect of the war as resulted in a generation of people with vastly differing views of what occurred, all of them searching for the truth...

Too bad that's not really what the documentary is focusing on. I mean, it is... it just isn't. The documentary has some very appealing and shocking narrative mixed in with a largely structureless program. Tiana reveals more than she intended to, and I don't believe she actually expected to get what she ended up with. Therefore, the documentary is surprising and interesting, but it has very little actually sorted out.

The subjective nature then makes it rather appealing, and therefore it's very interesting to watch. However, it hasn't been fully explored, so don't expect any resolution.

--PolarisDiB

Tiana Alexandra Silliphant's momentous documentary, about her return to her Vietnamese homeland, was theatrically released in 1995 and subsequently broadcast on Cinemax.

FROM Hollywood TO HANOI depicts Tiana's journey to Vietnam in 1988, and was the first American film shot in Vietnam after the war. Tiana was born after the French were driven out of Vietnam in 1954 following their loss at Dien Bien Phu. She left the country with her family in 1966, following the assassination of South Vietnamese President Diem - just as the next foreign occupier – America – was ramping up its own war efforts.

I have a particular interest in this remarkable journey because I was a senior in college when the draft lottery was reinstated on Dec. 1, 1969 (at the height of the war), making my graduating college class of 1970 the first to graduate with a diploma and a draft number. But this is a story that will capture the hearts and minds of anyone of any age who has an interest in learning from history why our country's seemingly endless contemporary war footing is a function as much of amnesia, as it is a vestigial need to remain the world's policeman.

Tiana grew up in Fairfax, Virginia, where her family resettled. Her father had been a politician, then Director of Press Relations for Diem. His anger at the communists who overran his country and his ongoing resentment of their victory is one of the emotional dynamics in Tiana's decision to return to Vietnam to see firsthand how the country coped after so many years of war.

An actress who starred alongside Robert Duvall, James Caan and Rod Steiger (among others), and trained with Bruce Lee, Tiana makes a formidable guide for this journey. Equal parts self-reliant, unabashed, brazen, heartfelt and curious, she exposes the viewer to peasants and politicians alike – with a couple of seminal military figures also included: General Giap, who helped defeat both the French and the Americans, and General Westmoreland. (Tiana was the first western journalist to interview Giap).

Tiana's journey takes her from Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) to Hanoi. Her quest is twofold: to come to terms with her own ambiguity about being so intimately connected to both cultures... and to take the temperature of a country that was strafed, bombed, burned and napalmed by the country of which she was now a citizen. It was a twin-healing she sought.

She returns to America personally rejuvenated - hopeful that her own emotional healing might augur well for a similar reconciliation between countries so famously linked by war. In the years since she made this film, the passage of time has seen the current administration shift its focus from Europe to Asia... signifying, perhaps, a national journey that might eventually share a similar reconciliation. Now if we could only get out of Afghanistan, and stay out of Syria, Libya and Iran, we might be able to say we finally learned something from the war in Southeast Asia made us losers for the first time.

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A couple of sidebars:

Most of the Vietnamese interviewed by Tiana showed no residual animosity for the people of the United States – but with the government that sent its soldiers into a war (of John Foster Dulles's "communist containment"). The lingering after-effects of the war are visible in the faces of the "Amerasian" Vietnamese, whose American fathers abandoned them when the war ended (and left many to a lifetime of scorn)... and in the disfigured survivors and fetuses of the those whose DNA was altered by the Americans' wartime policy of defoliating the countryside with Agent Orange.

Tiana's own parents remained unwilling to return to Vietnam while the communists were in control (and have since passed away.) Their emotional reaction to video messages from family members who stayed behind underscores the wrenching and often unseen emotional damage of war. Their hardened feelings are reminiscent of the thousands of Cubans who fled to Florida when Castro took power, unwilling to return home in his lifetime.

The film was executive produced by filmmaker Oliver Stone who knows a thing or two about Vietnamese and American relations (Platoon, and Born on the Fourth of July). Most heartening – for anyone who is sure to be captivated by this colorful and compelling journey – Tiana's relationship with the legendary General Giap marked the beginning of a twenty-five year friendship that led to hours of filmed interviews that is being shaped into her next project: THE GENERAL & ME.

• Denis O'Neill

I find this to be a very interesting film, first because of my time in Viet Nam and second because it explores the thoughts and feelings of a young woman from Viet Nam who returns to find her roots. The film is a record of her visit, post war, over the objection of her father. She makes contact with the family left behind and takes a no holds barred look at conditions of the country she left as a child. A wonderful expose of what it means to be a refugee and to return to the home of one's birth even though the native country and the adopted country are at odds. This film transcends politics but doesn't shy from them as it looks at culture of those left behind and those who have moved on to a new life. I think that everyone should view this film and get a feel of what it means to have been a child of a long, controversial war.