Cinematheque – LONG BIEN BRIDGE Documentary

Tuesday, 02 Dec, 8pm

The Embassy of Denmark in Hanoi invites you to a special documentary film screening at Hanoi Cinematheque on

Film: LONG BIEN BRIDGE (34 minutes)
The three Danish filmmakers will be on hand to introduce the film and answer questions after the screening.
Please note that this is a public screening, so please come early to get the best seats.

LONG BIEN BRIDGE

The steel-built Long Bien Bridge, crosses the Red River in Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam. The bridge is now over 100 years old and has always been of great importance to Hanoi and the northern region of Tonkin. The two-and-a-half kilometer long bridge connects the Vietnamese capital, Hanoi with the port Hai Phong and is a small lesson in a marked country’s turbulent modern history.

For the French colonial government, the construction was of strategic importance in securing control of northern Vietnam. From 1899 to 1902, more than 3,000 Vietnamese took part in the construction. At the time, the bridge was one of the longest in Asia.

Defence of the bridge played a major role in the war of resistance against the United States, as the bridge provided a secure connection to the port of Haiphong. The first attack took place in 1967. The defence of Long Bien Bridge continues to play a large role in Hanoi’s self-image and is often extolled in poetry and song.

Today trains, mopeds, bicycles and pedestrians use the dilapidated bridge, while all other traffic is diverted to newer bridges. The bridge now stands like a patched-up war veteran. Some parts of the original structure remain intact, while large sections have clearly been built later to repair the holes. In this way the bridge is a strong visual expression of history.

ABOUT THE DOCUMENTARY

Three Danish directors Steen Møller Rasmussen, Cai Ulrich v. Platen and Peter Schultz Jørgensen expand on and renew the classical tradition of documenting the flow of life around a central nexus of society.

The historical story of the bridge is the first subject of the film, but the major content is about the area’s street life, generated and continually created by the presence of the bridge. The bridge spans the Red River and crosses both cultivated fields and the course of the river itself. During the rainy season, the massive amounts of water convert the entire area into one large river. It is precisely because of these seasonal shifts that a unique culture has developed around the bridge, a place where urban and rural met as on one side of the bank still remains various agricultural scenes meanwhile on the opposite bank lies a new and rapidly changing area of urban development.

Without commentary and musical embellishment, the pictures are allowed to talk for themselves, and they tell a fantastic story about the varied life that surrounds the gradually dilapidated bridge in the course of a month in spring in 2007.

This film premiered in Hanoi last week.