Hear + Việt + Film

Hear + Việt + Film: a Symposium on Trans-Vietnamese Music in Film will be a two-day event bringing together scholars, film makers, and composers for a critical reassessment of music in Vietnamese film. Featuring lecture panels, film screenings, and Q&A sessions, the event seeks to bridge transnational as well as transdisciplinary perspectives on this global medium. It also seeks to raise public awareness of Vietnamese film as a site of translation that mediates between Vietnamese and diasporic contexts, a project that involves ongoing negotiations between languages, histories, and genres. The symposium also highlights the ways in which hearing the transnational contexts of Vietnamese film music requires listening for the presence of queer positionalities, both on and off screen. By evoking these complex entanglements between local and global contexts, Hear + Việt + Film will reevaluate film music in a trans-Vietnamese context.

Presented by the UCLA Center for Musical Humanities, in collaboration with co-organizers Holley Replogle-Wong (UCLA) and Damjan Rakonjac (UCLA). Co-sponsored by the UCLA Center for Southeast Asian Studies.

The screening of Journey from the Fall is presented by the UCLA Film & Television Archive, the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music, the UCLA Center for Musical Humanities, and the Sundance Institute.

This program is made possible by the Joyce S. and Robert U. Nelson Fund. Robert Uriel Nelson was a revered musicologist and music professor at UCLA, who, together with his wife, established a generous endowment for the university to make programs like this possible.

Schedule of Events

Day 1: October 21, 2022
Panel: “Social Media in a Trans-Vietnamese Context”
Zoom, 5pm-6:15pm PT
Day 2: October 22, 2022
Saturday Symposium Schedule

Symposium events will take place in Lani Hall, Schoenberg Music Building and will be livestreamed on the School of Music website

  • 9:45am PT – Opening Remarks
  • 10:00am – 11:30am – Morning Panel – Ben Tran (Vanderbilt University), Lan Duong (USC), Nguyen Thi Minh (UCLA), Jasmine Trice (UCLA), moderator
  • 11:45am – 1:00pm – Lunch in Courtyard
  • 1:00pm – 2:30pm – Afternoon Panel – Panivong Norindr (USC), Damjan Rakonjac (UCLA), Tina Huynh (University of Puget Sound) and Kate Drazner Hoyt (Pacific Lutheran University), George Dutton (UCLA), moderator
  • 2:45pm – 3:15pm – Presentation on My Van Films and the UCLA Film & Television Archive, May Hong HaDuong (UCLA) and Khanh-Phi Ha
  • 3:15pm – 4:15pm – Conversation with Ysa Le, VAALA‘s Executive Director and Eric Nong, Viet Film Fest‘s Artistic Director
  • 4:30pm – 5:00pm – Coffee Break in Courtyard
  • 5:00pm – 6:00pm – Panel Conversation with Filmmakers – Ham Tran, Victor Vu, Le Van Kiet
  • 6:00pm – 7:30pm – Dinner break in Courtyard
Day 2: October 22, 2022
Film Screening
Billy Wilder Theater, Hammer Museum
  • 7:30pm – Screening of Journey from the Fall at the Hammer Museum and Q&A with director Ham Tran and composer Christopher Wong
  • Registration is required for a ticket to the screening: Click here to register