Phim tài liệu Operation Babylift chiếu từ Ðông sang Tây
Saturday, April 17, 2010 Bookmark and Share
Càng gần 30/4 lịch chiếu càng dày đặc
DALLAS (NV) - Cuốn phim tài liệu Operation Babylift, được chiếu tại các đại hội điện ảnh khắp nơi trong gần 1 năm nay, sẽ chiếu dày đặc trong những ngày sắp tới, với mốc 35 năm ngày 30 tháng 4 đang tới gần.
Các địa điểm chiếu phim này sắp tới đây bao gồm nhiều chỗ từ điểm cực Tây Hoa Kỳ là quần đảo Hawaii, tới các tiểu bang miền Ðông.
Theo lời đạo diễn Tammy Nguyễn Lee nói với báo Người Việt trong một cuộc phỏng vấn hồi năm ngoái, phim ‘Operation Babylift: The Lost Children of Vietnam’ “kể lại chiến dịch lịch sử của Hoa Kỳ, mà cũng từng gây tranh cãi, cho cầu không vận bốc hơn 2,500 trẻ em mồ côi ra khỏi Việt Nam và đưa đến Mỹ. Gần 35 năm sau nhìn lại, câu chuyện được kể lại qua ký ức và quan điểm của những người tình nguyện trong cô nhi viện và trong chiến dịch Babylift, cùng với các trẻ mồ côi cũ nay đã lớn, tức là những người ‘adoptees’, để chia sẻ cuộc hành trình phức tạp của họ khi họ lớn lên tại đất nước này.”
Chiều Thứ Bảy, phim đã được chiếu tại đại học Loyola ở Chicago, với sự có mặt của đạo diễn. Ngay sau đó, đạo diễn Tammy Nguyễn Lee phải lập tức lên máy bay.
Ở điểm cực Tây Hoa Kỳ ngày hôm sau, Chủ Nhật 18 tháng 4, phim sẽ chiếu trong Ðại Hội Ðiện Ảnh Quốc Tế Hawaii. Phim được chọn trong chương trình “Spring Showcase” và sẽ chiếu tại rạp Regal Dole Cannery ở Honolulu.
Tới Thứ Sáu 23, phim chiếu ở bờ Ðông nước Mỹ, tại đại học New York University, trong chương trình do viện Asian/Pacific/American Institute của đại học này tổ chức. Ngoài đạo diễn, buổi chiếu sẽ có sự hiện diện của Jared Rehberg, một cựu cô nhi Việt trong nhóm Babylift và là một nhân vật trong phim.
Tới hôm sau đó, Thứ Bảy 24, trung tâm giáo dục New Jersey Vietnam Era Educational Center ở Holmdel sẽ chiếu phim Operation Babylift. Buổi nói chuyện sau đó có phần tham dự của bà Lana Noone, một người từng tình nguyện giúp đưa trẻ em di tản khỏi Việt Nam, và cô con gái nuôi của bà, Jen Noone.
Ngày Chủ Nhật 25, cuốn phim trở về bờ Tây, với một buổi chiếu tại rạp Bijou ở Eugene, Oregon, trong đại hội điện ảnh DisOrient Asian American Film Festival.
Ðạo diễn Tammy Nguyen Lee, một cựu Hoa Hậu Mỹ Gốc Á Texas 1999, tốt nghiệp cử nhân điện ảnh đại học Southern Methodist University, và cao học sản xuất điện ảnh tại UCLA.
Phim “Operation Babylift: The Lost Children of Vietnam” chiếu lần đầu tiên trên thế giới tại Ðại Hội Ðiện Ảnh Việt Nam Quốc Tế (ViFF) năm 2009 và đoạt giải Khán Giả Bình Chọn. Sau đó, tại Ðại Hội Ðiện Ảnh Mỹ gốc Á tại Philadelphia, phim đoạt giải Khán Giả Bình Chọn cho thể loại phim tài liệu.
http://www.nguoi-viet.com/absolutenm/anmviewer.asp?a=111611&z=3
KI'NH NHO*` DA.I CHU'NG KY` AN DU`M: MR. BILL E VA^NS, THO. TAM QUY GIOI PHA'P DANH: MINH AN, 60 TUOI, TAI QUA NA.N KHOI, TAT BENH TIEU TRU*`
The Airmail Orphan
As the Vietnam war came to a bloody close in 1975, 99 abandoned orphans were airlifted out of Vietnam by the Daily Mail newspaper in a mercy mission. As one of those orphans, brought up in Eastbourne by loving adoptive parents, Vikki sets out to track down her fellow travellers who were scattered, with no records, all around the UK. Vikki is reunited with her past as she makes her first return to Vietnam.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00rww3t
Trẻ mồ côi Babylift họp mặt tại Việt Nam
Sunday, April 04, 2010 Bookmark and Share
SÀI GÒN - Ðúng 35 năm sau ngày những chuyến không vận đầu tiên bốc trẻ mồ côi ra khỏi Việt Nam, gần 100 người trong số này đã tụ tập hội ngộ tại Sài Gòn ngày 2 tháng 4.
Chiến dịch “Operation Babylift” là một chương trình được Tổng Thống Gerald Ford đích thân cho phép, Hoa Kỳ không vận bốc hơn 2,500 trẻ em mồ côi ra khỏi Việt Nam trong những ngày cuối cùng của cuộc chiến.
Trong số những người trở lại Việt Nam năm nay có Lyly Koenig, được bốc đi khi mới 1 tuổi và được gia đình Koenig ở Missouri nhận làm con nuôi. Năm năm trước, Koenig về Việt Nam lần đầu tiên với một số người khác cũng từng là trẻ mồ côi được không vận.
Ðài KGO-TV ở San Francisco trích lời cô Koenig nói về chuyến đi đó, “Nhìn thấy Việt Nam và nhất là nhìn thấy trại mồ côi, giống như cho tôi đi đủ một vòng trở về. Có cảm tưởng như về nhà mình.”
Năm nay, Lyly Koenig sẽ trở về cùng với mẹ nuôi Karen.
Ðoàn Babylift về Việt Nam lần này cũng có những người được đưa đến nước khác như Anh, Úc.
http://www.nguoi-viet.com/absolutenm/anmviewer.asp?a=110987&z=2
Vietnam orphan tells her story 35 years on from Operation Babylift
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By Dennis Ellam 28/03/2010
Viktoria Cowley (Pics: Rex & Sunday Mirror)
She was listed as baby number 10 - one among 99 rescued from the war zone - and she had cried herself to sleep on the aeroplane.
Her past was unknown. Her future was uncertain. Like most of the others, she was an orphan... chosen at random and plucked from danger in the final days of the Vietnam War to be placed on a mercy flight to Britain.
Thirty-five years on Viktoria Cowley gazes at the photo of herself that day.
"Look at me, this tiny scrap of a thing, probably exhausted by fear!" she says. "In every picture where I have my eyes open, I'm crying."
April 6 will be the anniversary of Operation Babylift, an amazing mission organised in just 36 hours as the city of Saigon fell.
Youngsters were gathered up from children's homes and orphanages in a frenzy of panic as rumours swept the city that the advancing Vietcong intended to massacre them.
American President Gerald Ford said he feared the victorious communist Vietcong would show no mercy to abandoned infants, especially the ones fathered by American soldiers.
His words sparked the frantic evacuation of 2,000 Vietnamese orphans. Many went to the US, Australia and Canada, while 99 children, some only a few months old, were flown to London's Heathrow.
Now Viktoria has finally made an emotional return trip to her homeland.
Incredibly she has also managed to trace 30 others who were children on the same flight.
And this week she will travel back again to Saigon, which was renamed Ho Chi Minh City in 1976, to be reunited with the others for a fortnight of commemorations.
Viktoria says: "We were the innocents, the little waifs of war. Like the rest, I can't imagine how my life would have been if I had stayed there, or even if I would have lived.
"When that plane landed in England, it was like a pane of glass shattered and we were all pieces that went off in many directions, and now we are being brought back together again."
It was only two years ago, driven by curiosity about her own past, that Viktoria started her search for the rest of the war babies.
Her postings on the internet soon brought replies and word spread rapidly among a generation of men and women who, like her, were desperate to know about their lives before they were adopted by British families.
Among them were the two little boys pictured sleeping next to her on the seats of the chartered jumbo jet. On the left was Le Than, now an IT consultant in Wales. He recognised himself from the way he had fallen asleep, sucking his fingers. On her other side was Chris Law. He was "baby number three". When he got in touch, it turned out he grew up just a few miles from Viktoria's home in Eastbourne, East Sussex.
The flight of babies, only three weeks re Saigon was abandoned by the US, organised by a newspaper, amid fierce roversy.
befor was o contr Cri that t left i there care three arriv itics, including the Red Cross, argued the children would have been best in their own country, and said that e wasn't adequate provision for their in the UK. In fact, 51 were adopted, e died in hospital soon after their val and the others, including some disabled children, were put into homes run by the Ockenden Venture and the British Vietnamese Orphans project.
Today Viktoria, a civilian worker with Sussex Police, says: "The politics have never interested me, but the fact is that not one of the 30 people I've managed to contact so far has the slightest regret about what happened to them.
"We all feel that our lives have been better here than they could ever have been after the war."
Viktoria's journey back to Vietnam, with a BBC crew filming a documentary, failed to answer many of her personal questions: Who was she? Why was she abandoned in the city's Lam Ty Ni orphanage?
She was given the name Lam Yen Hang. But her real identity, the place where she came from, even her date of birth, would never be known. In the frantic evacuation, all paperwork was lost. She was destined to be one more of war's anonymous waifs.
The new direction in her life opened up as Saigon began to crumble in defeat.
Douglas Cowley, a manager with British American Tobacco in the city, had sent his wife Jennifer and their son Jonathan back to the UK. Now he was looking for a Vietnamese child to adopt. The couple wanted a daughter. Right away, Douglas was captivated by Lam Yen Hang and her tears. Viktoria managed to trace a former orphanage worker who remembered Douglas driving through the gates - and another who thought she recalled the little girl's mother bringing her baby there because her husband had died and she was too poor to cope with a family.
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Her natural father, Viktoria discovered, might have been a soldier with the pro-American Vietnamese army. If that was true, the family would probably have faced a grim future under Vietcong rule.
"My regret is that I left it so late to start looking for my past," Viktoria says. "Dad died 12 years ago and I kick myself for never asking him questions.
"This was the world I knew. I was the English daughter of an English family, growing up in an English town.
"On the first day at secondary school, my very first history lesson was the Vietnam War. How cruel was that? I wanted to know nothing about it. Now I've mellowed. I wanted to know these missing things about myself."
With her partner Paul, 34, and the blessing of her adoptive mother, Viktoria started her quest. "I wouldn't have done it without them," she says. "I'd heard so many stories about adopted children looking for their real parents and discovering nothing but grief.
"I was sort of expecting my arrival to feel like a homecoming as soon as I stepped off them plane, but it didn't.
"I woke up one morning in Vietnam and had the strangest emotion - like I was at peace, as if this missing part of my life's jigsaw had fallen into place."
The orphanage where she was taken, Viktoria discovered, has now gone, replaced by a school.
On the morning before she left again, its 750 pupils gathered in the courtyard and sang traditional Vietnamese songs in her honour. "It was the most moving experience," Viktoria says. "I was in tears." Next month Viktoria and the group she has brought together will join others from around the world, who were also evacuated on flights in Saigon's final days.
"I'm very grateful to my birth mother," she says. "She left me in a safe place where I could have the opportunity of a very full life, with a family who absolutely adored me. I can't ask for anything more."
The Airmail Orphan is on BBC1 in the South East tonight at 10.50pm. It is also on Sky Channel 983.
COMMENT: PAGE 14
LE THAN
The it consultant, who now lives in Wales, recognised himself when he saw the little boy on the left sucking his fingers as he slept in the moving picture of the three exhausted orphans getting ready to fly out of Saigon in 1975.
VIKTORIA COWLEY
Little Viktoria cried herself to sleep on the plane taking her out of Vietnam. She adapted to life in Britain and says proudly: "I was the English daughter of an English family growing up in an English town." Her big regret is that she did not start looking for her past earlier.
CHRIS LAW
Baby No3 on the plane became Chris Law. He got in touch with Viktoria through her internet search for other Vietnam orphans who were on that last historic flight from Saigon to a new life in Britain. The pair realised they had grown up grew up just a few miles apart.
HOW WE WERE IN 1975
Harold Wilson was Prime Minister.
The Bay City Rollers were at No1 in the charts with Bye Bye Baby.
The average house cost £11,787.
A gallon of petrol was 72p.
Charlie Chaplin was knighted by the Queen.
Motorola obtained the patent for the first mobile phone.
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2010/03/28/vietnam-orphan-tells-her-story-35-years-on-from-operation-babylift-115875-22144841/
