Last weekend, I attended the fundraising evening for the Boat People documentary Bolinao 52 at the Nguoi Viet Community Room in Little Saigon. The well-organized event raised a lot of money for the much-needed funds to complete this project. For those who don't know, Bolinao 52 documents the tragic event of a boat people ship with more than 100 people that was refused to be rescued by a US navy ship in the Pacific Ocean, resulting to the boat people reverting to cannibalism before only 52 survivors finally made it to Philippines island of Bolinao.
The filmmaker Duc Nguyen showed us a short preview of this documentary, and even introduced us to co^ Tu`ng, one of survivors of this tragedy. You will see her in this documentary, as she describes the incident, and Duc's team are preparing to do the final shootings of this documentary, as they follow chi. Tu`ng to Asia this August.
I’ve met Duc Nguyen originally at last year’s VPS North American Conference, and support his movie. Very much like Journey from the Fall, this is a movie that needs to be told to mainstream America as well as the new Vietnamese American generation. Unfortunately, this documentary did not receive the grants from PBS for which Duc applied (though it was among the top finalists), so I urge that you help out by donating to this cause.
Now that I have relocated to San Jose, I will also get involved more and will help out setting up a fundraiser for Bolinao 52 up here. If anyone of you can help out, please send me an email.