Daughter from Danang
| Daughter from Đà Nẵng | |
|---|---|
DVD cover
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| Directed by |
Gail Dolgin Vicente Franco |
| Produced by | Gail Dolgin Sunshine Sara Ludder (Associate Producer) |
| Starring | Heidi Bub Mai Thi Kim Tran Tuong Nhu |
| Music by | B. Quincy Griffin Hector Perez Van-Anh T. Vo (Vietnamese Musician) |
| Cinematography | Vicente Franco |
| Edited by | Kim Roberts |
|
Production
company |
Interfaze Educational Productions
in association with American Experience and the National Asian-American Telecommunications Association (NAATA) |
| Distributed by | PBS Home Video (US DVD) |
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Release date
|
November 1, 2002 (NYC) |
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Running time
|
83 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language |
English Vietnamese |
Daughter from Đà Nẵng is a 2002 documentary film about an Amerasian, Heidi Bub (a.k.a. Mai Thi Hiep), born on December 10, 1968, in Danang in southern Vietnam, one of the children brought to the United States from Vietnam in 1975 during "Operation Babylift" at the end of the Vietnam War.
Heidi's mother, Mai Thi Kim, already had three children and was estranged from her husband Do Huu Vinh, who had left her to fight with the Viet Cong. She was working at an American military base where she met Heidi's father, an American serviceman. When the North Vietnamese army came closer to Danang, Mai Thi Kim feared for Heidi's safety due to rumors of retaliation against mixed-race children. At the age of six, Heidi was sent to United States and placed in an orphanage run by the Holt Adoption Agency.
Heidi was ultimately adopted by Ann Neville, a single American woman; she spent a year in Columbia, South Carolina before finally settling in Pulaski, Tennessee, where Heidi spent her life.
At the start of the documentary, Heidi has been estranged from her adoptive mother for several years. Her mother evicted Heidi from the home and disowned her for coming home ten minutes after curfew. Heidi had since married and had children of her own, but the estrangement between her and her mother has had a lasting emotional effect, and Heidi hopes that finding her biological mother will help her to achieve some kind of closure. Heidi contacts the Holt Adoption agency, and learns that her biological mother, Mai Thi Kim, sent them a letter in 1991 asking about Heidi's well-being. Heidi decides to return to Vietnam, assisted by journalist Tran Tuong Nhu.
In Vietnam, both Heidi and her family experience culture shock, as Heidi has no knowledge of Vietnamese customs and her family— who lives in abject poverty— has little knowledge of American culture. Mai Thi expects to spend every moment of every day with Heidi, including sleeping beside her at night. Not accustomed to such physical closeness, Heidi feels "suffocated" and uncomfortable with the lack of personal space.
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Wikipedia