Research Article
A Study on History of Vietnamese Cinematography from Revolutionary to Commercial Movies
Sogang Institute for East Asian Studies, Sogang University
Published: February 2006 · Vol. 25 No. 1 · pp. 421-449
Full Text
Abstract
This paper aims at an overview of History of Vietnamese Cinematography and at a study on its development processes. The import of cinematography as an art dated back from the time of the French domination, but it officially started in 1953 with the movement of socialist revolutionary movies in the North Vietnam. The "Doi moi" policy has imposed the obligatory changes in Vietnamese Cinematography. It confronted then a lot of challenges by the first years of 1990s. However, Vietnamese Cinematography progressively found its road and came back to life. Recently, several movies have been highly appreciated by spectators and encroached upon imported American movies. What can be found between the lines of the paper is that "Doi moi" policy, or in other words, the market mechanism is the key factor of the transformation of Vietnamese Cinematography from revolutionary to commercial nature. It is also what the author wants to express as a hypothesis. The paper's structure is Part 1: Introduction Part 2: History of Vietnamese Cinematography before Doi moi Part 3: History of Vietnamese Cinematography after Doi moi Part 4: Vietnamese Cinematography as an Industry Part 5: As a Conclusion. The limitation of this paper may reside in the fact that it does not deal with the period 1945-1975 of South-Vietnam's Cinematography and also that it excludes documentary movies and cartoon in its material.
