April 27, 2005
FILM SCREENING with Special Guest,
Director/Screenwriter
Nghiem-Minh Nguyen-Vô
Buffalo Boy /
Muøa Len Trâu
(Gardien
de buffles)
"...Buffalo Boy,
Minh Nguyen-Vô’s first feature, blends tradition, history and
personal memories in a highly rewarding, epic narrative. Set in the
lowlands of South Vietnam during the French occupation in
1940, the film follows the passage into adulthood of Kim (Le The Lu), a
fifteen-year-old boy in charge of herding two starving buffaloes to
the high pastures of mounts Bâ-thé, far away from the
massive flooding
brought by the rainy season. In his harsh voyage through vast
landscapes immersed in water, Kim discovers a male universe of
violence, alcohol
and deception, but also a world of freedom, virile friendship and
solidarity – the world of the buffalo keepers. Enthralled by the
nomadic
life of these wretched brigands and in search of means of sustenance,
Kim abandons his extremely poor family, but he will never forget his
origins or his father. Using water as a powerful metaphor and a
stunning visual device, Buffalo Boy
has the mercurial pace of
youth’s inner turmoil, turning Kim’s fight for freedom into an oblique
reference to the country’s historical background. The flow of events
that rules
his life bears the same destructive yet regenerating force as the
water: family ties and affections are flooded, swept away in a potent
call
for adulthood and kept secret at the bottom of a shallow marsh.
Fascinating for its livid aesthetic and even for its rough-hewn
structure, Buffalo Boy has the
elemental appeal of a wonderfully woven
tale of life and survival." (Toronto International Film Festival)
"....Ostensibly a coming-of-age story, this languorous, beautifully
shot
feature debut centers on a teenager whose journey from innocence to
knowledge is also a twinned meditation on both the natural and very
unnatural state of things......despite the overwhelming physical beauty
of the landscape and the simplicity of his characters, he doesn't
succumb to...aerated thinking. The world in "Buffalo Boy" is filled
with wonder, but it is a world also filled with real desire, real
death, not abstractions. (M. Dargis,
The New York Times, March 2005)
Buffalo Boy has won
several international awards such as Special Prize from the Young Jury
(Locarno International Film Festival), New Directors Silver Hugo Award
(Chicago International Film Festival), Licorne d’or (Golden Unicorn,
Grand Prix – Amiens International Film Festival, France), and Premier
Special Jury Award (Amazonas International Film Festival, Brazil).
-Vietnam, 2004, 102 min; Vietnamese
with Eng subtitles
Nghiem-Minh Nguyen-Vô was raised in a rural
area much like “Buffalo Boy’s” terrain. His parents ran a tiny,
one-room cinema, and he grew up watching anything they could get to
sell tickets. The movies, he recalls, made an “escape from atrocity of
the world for an hour or two, and a window on the world.”
Nguyen-Vo
studied engineering in France and earned a Ph.D. in applied physics
from UCLA in 1984. He was reportedly fascinated with the interaction
between sound and light in physics, and he subsequently obtained a
diploma in cinema and new
media at UCLA Extension. After directing a short film and a
documentary, he participated in the Independent Feature Project/West’s
Screenwriters Lab with his script for Buffalo Boy, which is his
first feature film.