Point de départ (Starting Place) / Say Kom Sa

Robert Kramer
France/Vietnam 1994
Screenplay, Cinematography: Robert Kramer; Editing: Christine Benoît, Robert Kramer, Marie-Hélène Mora. DCP, color, 80 min, French/English/Vietnamese with English subtitles ☼

BEFORE: Say Kom Sa
Robert Kramer, France 1998
Editing: Robert Kramer, Julien Cloquet. DCP, color, 20 min, French/Vietnamese with English subtitles ☼

“Going (Back) to Vietnam” is a powerful essay by Kramer featured in the first issue of the French magazine *Trafic*, first available in English in the book *Starting Places*. For Kramer, the Vietnam chapter was not closed after the Newsreel partisan film *People’s War* (1969). He returned in 1992 to see what had become of the country, its people, the euphoria, the struggle, and the solidarity after almost 25 years. A series of reunions reveal traces of the war everywhere: a ballet dancer’s amputated leg, personal memories of the relentless U.S. attacks, and a war memorial museum. A kind of reverse shot: a close-up dialogue with incarcerated SDS comrade Linda Evans. She was in Vietnam in 1969, later joined the militant Weather Underground, and was sentenced to forty years in prison in 1987.

Before: Say Kom Sa*—“c’est comme ça” pronounced with an American accent. Quiet observations of Hanoi at a time when the opening to the West (and thus to tourism) is visible on construction sites. (Volker Pantenburg)

Photo: Filmarchiv Austria