In 1988, a Vietnamese-American woman returns to her homeland for the first time since childhood against the wishes of her anti-communist father and the US trade embargo.In 1988, a Vietnamese-American woman returns to her homeland for the first time since childhood against the wishes of her anti-communist father and the US trade embargo.In 1988, a Vietnamese-American woman returns to her homeland for the first time since childhood against the wishes of her anti-communist father and the US trade embargo.
- Awards
- 1 nomination
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Tiana Alexandra-Silliphant
- Self
- (as Tiana Thi Thanh Nga)
Nguyen Giap Vo
- Self
- (as Giap Nguyen Vo)
William C. Westmoreland
- Self
- (as William Westmorland)
Storyline
Featured review
Tiana Silliphant's documentary chronicles her return home after the war to try to reconcile the emotional wounds of being Vietnamese born and American bred.
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.
** ** **
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.
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.
** ** **
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
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- Denisroneill
- Feb 14, 2014
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Top Gap
By what name was From Hollywood to Hanoi (1992) officially released in Canada in English?
Answer