“I cannot imagine my life here as opposed to the United States,” says Heidi Bub. She’s traveled back to Vietnam, where she was born during the American war, the child of Mai Thi Kim and an unknown U.S. GI. Instructed by the American government in 1975 that it would be “best” for the children to send them to the States via Operation Babylift, Mai Thi Kim sent her precious baby Hiep away. Raised in Tennessee by a single mother, at 22, Heidi decides to seek out her birth mother — and bring along a film crew when she travels to meet her. The result is the Academy Award-nominated documentary Daughter From Danang (2002), one of several films showing 11 October at Stranger Than Fiction‘s “Tribute to Gail Dolgin.” The event, co-sponsored by Chicken & Egg Pictures and POV, will include a Q&A with Dolgin’s colleagues, friends and family.
Dolgin’s work is consistently probing, delving deeply into intricate contexts in beautifully nuanced ways. Daughter from Danang (available for viewing online) makes this plain and poignant when Heidi spends several days basking in affection displayed by her siblings, mother, and her mother’s husband, and then feels beset by their suggestion that she help to “take care of” Mai Thi Kim. As Heidi dissolves into tears, fluttering her hands and insisting that she “can’t do this,” the film observes not only her distress, but also the ways that her American upbringing has left her utterly unprepared to feel open to another culture and set of expectations. “I still look at her as a white American, because there’s really no Oriental in her,” says family friend Brenda Lewis, just one of several interviews that suggest how Heidi has come to feel so vexed about her background and her responsibilities.
This remarkable film, like others made by Dolgin and her partner Vicente Franco, makes visible the complications in histories that otherwise seem simple. Cuba Va: The Challenge of the Next Generation (1993) and American Experience: Summer of Love (2001) both consider diverse perspectives on famous historical moments of revolution, in San Francisco in 1967 and in Cuba, following the coup deposing Batista in the late 1950s. As the Stranger Than Fiction tribute reveals, Dolgin’s work remains compassionate, sharp, and moving.
See PopMatters‘ review of Daughter From Danang.