Vietnamese festivals on show at French photo exhibit  

A photo exhibition featuring Vietnam’s traditional cultural festivals will be held from May 26 to June 13 at the Vietnam Cultural Center in France, reported newswire To quoc of the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism this week.

The show, to be co-held by the Ministry and others, will portray major, outstanding festivals and rites held throughout Vietnam, including the Giong, Huong Pagoda, Hung Kings Temple festivals in the north, as well as gong festivals in the central highlands, and the wedding ceremonies of Khmer ethnic groups in the south.

The photos were selected from submissions to photo contests both in Vietnam and abroad.

The event aims to provide an overall view of the country’s traditional, folk culture to French people and the world as a way to promote tourism in Vietnam.

After the exhibition, the photo collections will be given to the center to continue promoting Vietnamese culture and tourism in European countries.

HCM City exhibition presents UK eco-designs

An eco-design exhibition that showcases some of the new approaches and innovations in sustainable design by contemporary designers and architects from the UK is now open at HCM City Exhibition House.

Called Everything Forever Now, the exhibition is organised by the British Council and British Embassy in Ha Noi.

An embassy press release noted that in recent years, there has been a shift in the way that designers approach the idea of sustainable design.

"Now they view it less as a problem, and more as a fact of life, and certainly as an opportunity to rethink what and how we make things, and how we might go about our lives in a more effective and positive way," the release said.

"Through intelligent design and by utilising new technologies and materials, we can develop sustainable solutions that naturally give back what they take out," it said.

The exhibition presents the work of a new generation of designers who are able to "pioneer technologies and techniques that promise to change our environment for the better".

The exhibition will remain open until April 20, from 9am to 7pm at 92 Le Thanh Ton Street, District 1, HCM City.

Ly Son Island ceremony honours Hoang Sa martyrs

A ceremony was held in the central province of Quang Ngai yesterday to pay tributes to sailor-soldiers of the Hoang Sa Flotilla who sacrificed their lives to guard the Hoang Sa (Paracel) Island centuries ago.

The ceremony has been held annually for hundreds of years at the An Vinh communal house on Ly Son Island on the fifteenth and the sixteenth days of the third lunar month which this year fell on April 5 – 6. Thousands of the island's residents and tourists attended the ceremony.

During the rituals, paper boats with effigies of sailors were launched in the sea in homage to troop, of the past that headed out to sea to exploit its natural resources and safeguard Hoang Sa.

A requiem for the souls of the sailors, most of whom were natives of Ly Son Island, was held on yesterday morning.

The Hoang Sa Flotilla was founded under the Nguyen dynasty in the 19th century to protect territorial waters of the country.-

Third Cultural Festival for Vietnamese ethnic groups

The third Cultural Festival for Vietnamese Ethnic Groups will take place at the Culture-Tourism Village of Vietnamese ethnic groups in Dong Mo, Son Tay, Hanoi on April 18-19.

The event, themed “Opportunity in the Year of Dragon”, will be attended by representatives of 13 ethnic community groups from eight provinces to honour their cultural values and strengthen the national great unity bloc.

The opening ceremony of the festival will be broadcast live by Radio the Voice on Vietnam (VOV) and Vietnam Television (VTV).

During the festival, there will be a trade fair, an exhibition on traditional craft villages, a seminar on trade promotion, and music and dance performances.

Programme helps children with heart disease

The programme “Connecting the Hearts” was held in New York on April 4 to raise fund and call for assistance to children with heart disease in Vietnam.  
 
At the event, Ambassador Le Hoai Trung, Head of the Vietnamese permanent delegation to the UN, said there are more than 10,000 children born with congenital heart defects each year in the homeland.
At present, doctors have performed operation on only 6,000 of the waiting list of 16,000 children with heart diseases.

He called on humanitarian organisations and US friends, organisations and individuals to provide expertise and financial assistance to the charitable organisation called “Understanding the Hearts” to help Vietnamese children suffering from heart disease.

For his part, Actor Pham Gia Chi Bao said the organisation is implementing effectively five projects, on heart surgery for poor children, building gift houses, financing poor students’ study and a scholarship programme.

He said a similar programme was held by the organisation “Understanding the Hearts” in Washington on April 2.

Meanwhile, Director of the Southern Diaspora Research and Development Centre Esmeralda V.Brown said that her center will come to Vietnam to help with treating children with heart disease.

Stanley Kubrick’s "Lolita" to be screened for free in Hanoi

A free screening of “Lolita,” a movie adaptation of the classic novel of the same title by Russian writer Vladimir Nabokov and directed by Stanley Kubrick in 1962, will take place in Hanoi this weekend.

The event, held by the Hanoi-based Center for Assistance and Development of Movie, includes a talk after the movie by local director Phan Dang Di and translator Duong Tuong who recently translated the book into Vietnamese.

Starring James Mason and Sue Lyon, the movie brought the young actress a Golden Globe Award for Most Promising Newcomer.

A narrative of the relationship between a middle-aged college professor and a 14-year-old nymphet, it was severely censored in the releasing year due to its sensitive content. The British Board of Film Censors rated it X, meaning no one under the age of 16 was permitted in theaters where it was showing.

The screening takes place at 2 pm on April 8 at 22A Hai Ba Trung Street.

Phan Dang Di is director of Vietnamese award-wining movie “Bi, Don’t be afraid” and a nominee for Best Writer at the Asian Film Awards in Hong Kong for the movie “Adrift” directed by Bui Thac Chuyen in 2010.

Last month, he also hosted a screening of Cannes’s Golden Palm winner “The Tree of Life” by American director Terrence Malick at the center.

In a related development, Vietnam National Film Board recently decided to restrict the number of movie-goers who want to view “Breaking Dawn,” the latest sequel of the renowned series “Twilight Saga,” by labeling it 16+, saying the movie has scenes not suitable to Vietnamese audiences under 16 years old.

Meanwhile, Sony Pictures decided not to release “The Girl With The Dragon Tatoo” in Vietnam since the National Film Board requires the studio to remove certain sensitive scenes from the movie.

Teens banned from major music show

Under-18s will be banned from one of the biggest music events of the year. The Step Up Summer music festival will take place on April 11, but teenagers will struggle to be admitted, as the show has introduced Vietnam’s first age limit on admission.

Organisers have taken the contentious decision to exclude younger fans due to the rash of media-generated scandals involving scantily clad pop-singers.

The show, jointly organised by the Hanoi Beer Company and teen-favourite online website mp3.zing.vn, will feature pop and commercial hiphop favourites including Tuan Hung, Doan Trang, Dong Nhi, Luu Huong Giang, Hoang Hai, The Men, M4U, Emily, Justa Tee and Rapper LK.

General Director of the festival, composer Ho Hoai Anh said the event would be unlike anything seen before.

Free tickets will distributed from the Giang Vo Exhibition Centre.

Artistic show in support of disabled to be held

The 9th “One Heart, One World” artistic show will be broadcast live on VTV2 on Apr. 14 to call on the community to pay more care to disadvantaged people and orphaned children.

Speaking at a press briefing in Hanoi on Apr. 5, Nguyen Dinh Lieu, President of the Association in Support of Vietnamese Handicapped and Orphans said that many popular artists will join children from Ba Dinh district of Hanoi in the performance.

He added that the programme’s organising board has so far collected nearly 13 billion VND (600,000 million USD) from local and foreign individuals and organsiations to help people with disabilities and orphans with hope of helping them overcome difficulties.

In 2011, the programme raised over 10 billion VND and spent the amount buying gifts and paying for medical treatment for disabled people and orphans in 38 communes nationwide.

Over the past years, the association organised many activities to help people with disabilities and orphans integrate into the local community and improve their lives.