Daughter From Danang
by Vicente Franco, Gail Dolgin
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DVD details
Actor: Gerald Ford, Heidi Neville-Bub, Mai Thi Kim, Tom Miller, Tran Tuong NhuDirector: Gail Dolgin, Vicente Franco
Cinematographer: Vicente Franco
Producer: Gail Dolgin
Editor: Kim Roberts
Producer: Sunshine Ludder
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language); Vietnamese (Original Language)
Format: Color, DVD, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 83 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2004-02-17
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Pbs (Direct)
DVD Reviews of Daughter From Danang
DVD Review: Thought provoking but exploitative
Summary: 2 Stars
The movie was certainly thought provoking. It touches on issues cultural misunderstandings, abandonment, imperialism, and war.
It was easy to hate Heidi at first. She came off as an ignorant "ugly American". But the more I thought about it, I realized that she was much more complicated than that. She was SEVEN years old when she was adopted! That's old enough to have memories of an old life which must have been very traumatizing for her. Add the unloving adopted mother and you have a young woman who's desperate to find a loving mother to take care of her like a little girl. I can see why the family's request was overwhelming for her.
I think the film exploited Heidi though. I think the film makers were so excited about having a "good story" that they were careless in preparing Heidi for the trip. The translator should have prepared Heidi and taught her more about the Vietnamese culture.
Does anyone have any updates on what happened to Ms. Bub? I wonder if she ever re-opened that door.
DVD Review: The Filmmakers are the Villains in This Film
Summary: 1 Stars
I've been brooding about this movie for 24 hours and I think I finally have a handle on what made it so horribly disturbing: everyone in it was set up by the filmmakers in such a way as to guarantee drama and real pain that they could package and sell.
Poor Heidi, who has somehow managed to have a good life in spite of everything she's endured, is not the sharpest tool in the shed--she didn't do any homework that could have minimized the culture shock that caused the worst problems with her "homecoming." You can excuse her Vietnamese relatives for not doing their homework--they are busy trying to scratch out a living in very difficult conditions and have had little education. Anyway, that was the only thing you can blame Heidi for.
On the other hand, the filmmakers knew exactly what was in store. They had a handle on both cultures and knew what (and probably when) to expect regarding the inevitable collision.
Vicente Franco and Gail Dolgin should be ashamed of themselves, but I am sure they aren't...their culture rewards this kind of heartless exploitation. It's as different from my culture as Heidi's was from her birth mother's. Thank heavens.
DVD Review: disappointing
Summary: 3 Stars
Airlifted eurasian baby returns to her homeland as twenty-something, is freaked out and disgusted by Viet culture and birth mother. This movie could have conveyed a universal message about quests to find ones' roots, but instead it depicts an idiosyncratic event. The young woman of mixed racial ancestry was raised by insular and uneducated southerners who seem to have mistreated her, and so she became a self-loathing, ethnocentric redneck. Anyone else going back to examine her ethnic roots would probably read a book first and have a minimally realistic understanding of what she was about to see and experience. The culture clash is explained entirely by the adopted southern attitudes of the main character. DVD Review: adoption reunions don't always work out
Summary: 4 Stars
Heidi Bub, a 29yr old wife and mother living in Tennessee, launches on an overseas journey to find her roots in Vietnam.
At age 6, young Hiep is surrendered by her mother to Americans, who, through Operation Babylift, take the Vietnamese children of American military men back to the U.S. to be adopted by American families.
Hiep's mother made a noble and heartbreaking sacrifice, surrendering her child because of rumors that all Amerasian children remaining in Vietnam would be burned alive after the war.
Hiep was flown to the U.S., adopted by a single woman who moved them to Tennessee, and - at age six - transformed from Hiep into Heidi.
At age six, she remembered her previous home, her biological mother and siblings, the trauma of the war. She carried with her no understanding of the sacrifice made by her family -- only the sense of loss and abandonment, and the childlike belief that she must be a bad person to have been left by her mother.
When she ultimately split from her adoptive mother, Heidi began to long for her first home, to finally find "a mother's love" -- someone who would love and accept her "just as I am."
When she found her biological mother, she discovered the pretty dreams of reunion and unconditional love could not match reality. Her family was grindingly poor -- something she was clearly not prepared for. They lived with the hopes that she -- an American and someone better off than they -- would rise to her familial obligations and care for the family by providing for them. Cherished Asian values of community and filial duty clash with American values of individualism and privacy. Heidi is insulted by all the talk of money. Conversations center around the family's wish for her monetary help. She cannot meet their expectations, she tells them. She guards her money and her heart and her privacy, wiping off her cheek where her doting mother plants frequent kisses. Resenting the "touchy-touchy" of her family, who don't value the distance and aloofness she does as an American. The cultural gap between Heidi and the family that once was hers is wide and unbridgeable.
The cultural misunderstandings between them lead to an irreparable split. Heidi's mother loses Hiep again, and her suffering and grief is unbearable to witness.
In their desperation to please Heidi, to explain themselves and their cultural norms, they attempt to communicate through a translator. Despite their poverty, they give Heidi gifts for her family. But Heidi can't see past her sense of insult, her regret at having made the trip to Vietnam, only to ruin her previously golden memories and dreams "with all this bad stuff."
She is a difficult person to sympathize with. It would have taken so little for her to make a difference in their lives. A monthly stipend of a few dollars would have made the difference of where that family lived, whether her nieces and nephews could go to school. However, she clings to her dreams of the perfect adoption reunion which results in a happily-ever-after family, a "sweet, gentle, soft-spoken Asian mom" who loves her without asking anything in return. She can't wait to leave Vietnam -- the culture-shock overwhelms her. She arrives back in Tennessee, tells her adoptive grandmother "you're who I know." Her grandmother tells her "I'm glad you went. I'm glad you got good pictures." Meanwhile, we see Heidi's mother in Vietnam weeping, suffering because she's lost Hiep all over again.
For me, it doesn't challenge the notion of adoption -- no, rather it challenges this American preoccupation with the dream of adoption reunions. When American adoptees seek to reunite with biological families overseas, this film is a stark reminder that those families will have cultural norms that oftentimes clash strongly with Americans' values. This film reminds us that biological families will have needs and expectations. When adoptees travel, not knowing, not understanding those needs, this film reminds us that the cultural gaps can lead to devastating results -- especially for the biological families. It left me wishing that Heidi had thought this through first. A little empathy and generosity would have gone a long, long way.
DVD Review: Emotionally Riveting Documentary
Summary: 5 Stars
Heidi Bub is a young American woman who decides to return to Vietnam to meet with her birth mother, Mai Thi Kim, who gave her up for adoption when Heidi was age 7. Heidi was adopted by a cold hearted American woman who told Heidi she was "no longer my daughter" when Heidi came home late from a date. So clearly Heidi is someone with ample reasons to have emotional issues, especially a sense of abandonment.
This provides the context for an intercultural mother-daughter reunion that Heidi is completely unprepared for. It's obvious that Heidi experiences severe cultural shock upon her arrival in Vietnam. She also can't deal with what she perceives as her mother's clinging behavior. Heidi says this makes her feel like she is the mother rather than the daughter. It's obvious that her romantic vision of finally having a mother who would take care of and protect her is hopelessly naive.
Heidi's final and most intense breakdown occurs when her Vietnamese family makes a very direct request for her to support her mother with a monthly financial stipend. My wife is originally from Ecuador, a country that, like Vietnam, places more emphasis on family obligations and taking care of your elders than the individualistic and youth oriented United States. So she felt a strong emotional connection to the Vietnamese family and become intensely upset with Heidi for what she perceived to be Heidi's extreme greediness and selfishness. I, on the other hand, did feel some sympathy for Heidi's circumstances. She was in a totally diiferent culture with people she hardly knew. She clearly was confused and felt that perhaps her birth mother was only looking for financial assistance rather than love. Heidi was, quite possibly, wrong about her mother's intentions. But none of us were there and I think it's impossible to know the truth of the situation. I recommend reading an earlier review by Song Toan, a Vietnamese woman living in Singapore. She says the Vietnamese family were being totally improper in their requests for money from Heidi. So perhaps this really isn't a case of cultural misunderstanding after all.
One of the many great aspects to this documentary is that the film makers remain objective thoroughout and leave it up to the viewer to decide what is truly going on between mother and daughter. This is one of the best and most emotionally powerful docs I have ever seen. Highly recommended!
Description of Daughter From Danang
Studio: Pbs Release Date: 05/04/2009 Run time: 90 minutesA mix of epic history and intimate family portrait, Daughter from Danang follows the reunion of a Tennessee woman, Heidi, with her Vietnamese mother and siblings after 22 years. Shipped to the U.S. in the waning days of the Vietnam war, Heidi--formerly Mai Thi Hiep--was the daughter of a white American soldier and a Danang woman abandoned by her Viet Cong husband. Fearing reprisals against Amerasian children, Hiep's mother, despite unbearable pain, gave Hiep to an adoption agency. Raised by an abusive woman in Pulaski (birthplace of the KKK), Hiep/Heidi kept her full heritage secret. This episode of PBS's American Experience follows Heidi's journey home: There is sorrow, joy, and relief, of course, but also a slow-brewing uneasiness as cultures collide. As raw expectations of her impoverished, Third World family begin to grate on Heidi, the burden of carrying two national destinies becomes comically and tragically oversized in the poor woman's shoes. --Tom Keogh
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