Making time during his busy schedule, the internationally acclaimed Vietnamese filmmaker, Dang Nhat Minh visited UMass Boston Friday, October 22 to introduce his award winning film Thuong Nho Dong Que (Nostalgia for the Countryland). Minh is in the United States on a two-week trip, and plans to visit ten universities. It was UMB’s great fortune to have him visit on his tour. His UMB visit was sponsored by the William Joiner Center Minh arrived in Boston from New York after screening his film Mua Oi (the Season of Guavas) at Cornell University the day before. He was scheduled to show Bao Gio Cho Den Thang Muoi (When the Tenth Month Comes) at Yale University the next day. This was not Minh’s first time to the US. However, it was the first time he talked to an American audience about his films. Dang Nhat Minh was born in 1938 in Hue, Vietnam. He started his career making documentaries around 1965 during the Vietnam War, and expanded his vision to making dramas in 1975. He is a self-taught filmmaker, having learned by reading books and hearing the words of other filmmakers. Thuong Nho Dong Que, made in 1995, is a story about a 17-year-old boy named Nham and his family who lived in a rural village. The film touches upon one of Minh’s common themes throughout his films: the economic gap between cities and villages in Vietnam. In Nham’s village, for instance, rice fields are plowed by water buffalos, old-fashioned TV has just arrived, and electricity is shut down at night, save during necessary situations. Nham had to quit school to help his family in the fields. In one particular scene, one of Nham’s relatives who had lost her husband during the war complained she didn’t make enough money to visit her husband’s grave. Juxtaposed to the rural life, the audience was informed of the lifestyles of those who lived in the city with luxuries such as fine clothes, food, and drink, costing more than what the average women from the village made in one day. Another scene shows a local teacher of the village talking to Quyen, a woman who returned from the city longing for the idyllic innocence of her childhood in the village. He continued to explain to her that though farmers are able to produce more crops than before, the government sets prices so high that farmers are unable to elevate their quality of life. In addition, farmers were forced to go to cities to buy necessary seeds and were occasionally handed fake seeds by the city people. After his film screening, Minh argued that the peasants bore the burden of the country in order to support the remaining population. The peasants were the ones who fought at the front line in battlefields, to loose their loved-ones during wars, and who still suffered the awful conditions of poverty. “After a war, people expect that their life will be improved, but it never happened for peasants,” Minh added. His film has been praised and supported by Vietnamese farmers, who have had a chance to view it. The Vietnamese government too allowed the film to be played at theaters without censoring. His films have won several awards in Vietnam, and Bao Gio Cho Den Thang Muoi (1984) has been regarded as a classic film among Vietnamese film critics. His reputation has been globally spread, and the film screened last Friday earned six awards including Prize for Best Director at the 11th National Film Festival, The Kodak Award at the 40th Asian-Pacific Film Festival, and The Audience Prize at the Festival of the Three Continents in Nantes (France). However, Minh commented that in the present day, Vietnam’s youth are more interested in Hollywood. As a result, theaters haven’t screened his films for a long period of time. At Friday’s screening, in fact, only a handful of UMB students joined.