Ao dai fashion show hits Berlin runway

A fashion show of ao dai, the traditional Vietnamese long robe, was held in Berlin on Saturday with the participation of Spanish designer Diego Cortizas.

The Viet Nam Embassy in Germany organised the event together with a music show to celebrate 40 years of relations between Viet Nam and Germany.

The event, entitled Diversity in Vietnamese Identity, took place at Dong Xuan commercial centre, established by the Vietnamese community in Berlin.

Shooting starts on father-son indie movie

Independent film director Luong Dinh Dung's first feature film, Cha Cong Con (Father Carries Son) is being shot this week in Ha Giang Province.

The film features the short life of Ca, a boy living in a fishing village who has a life-threatening disease. His father, Moc, a poor fisherman, works hard to earn money to pay his medical bills.

"My film is for Vietnamese fathers. I hope it will leave a strong impression on audiences through its stories, images and music," said Dung, in a recent interview with Dien Anh Viet Nam (Viet Nam Cinematography) magazine.

As a graduate of the Ha Noi College of Theatre and Cinematography, he has worked for private and State-owned film companies and studios.

Vietnam, Hungary co-sponsor concert in New York

A cultural show themed "Dialogue through art and music" was recently held in New York as a joint effort of the Permanent Missions of Vietnam and Hungary to the United Nations with the aim to strengthen friendship and understanding between nations.

The June 25 event saw the attendance of Lakshmi Puri, Assistant Secretary-General of the UN and Deputy Director of the UN Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women) as well as ambassadors, heads of missions to the UN.

At the show, Vietnamese pianist Chau Giang and renowned artists from the Budapest Opera and other countries performed famous works of Zoltan Kodaly, Franz Liszt, Johann Sebastian Bach, and Erik Satie.

The representation "Dialogue through art and music" was organised on the initiative of Ambassador Katalin Bogyay, former President of the General Assembly of UNESCO for the 36th term (2011-2013), and currently head of the Permanent Mission of Hungary to the United Nations.

Protection, restoration of fine arts focused

Domestic and international experts gathered in Hanoi on June 26 to share experience and expertise on protecting and restoring the fine arts.

The workshop, organised by the Vietnam Fine Arts Museum, forms part of activities under a project jointly implemented by the museum, the Dresden University of Art in Germany and the Goethe Institute in Hanoi from 2012-2017.

Participants discussed the restoration of the two oil paintings “Me con” (Mother and baby), and “Ruou can” (drinking wine out of a jar through pipes).

Marina Langner from the University, who led the joint team, introduced the two works of art before and after their restoration, as well as the techniques applied in the process.

Since 2013, the Museum has sent staff members to the Dresden University of Art and conducted a number of training sessions with German experts to build staff capacity.

It also aims to apply advanced technology in the protection and restoration of art in line with the plan for art development through 2020.

The Vietnam Fine Arts Museum has more than 20,000 vulnerable and precious pieces of oil painting, lacquer, wood, paper and fabric art works.

A musical take on current issues

Vietnamese traditional musical language, xam or busking, has been used for the very first time to communicate social issues in a music video entitled Xam Tra Da (Iced Tea Busking).

The special video was released on June 21, which coincided with the 90th anniversary of Viet Nam's Revolutionary Press Day.

The nearly nine-minute-long video has been produced by Xam Ha Thanh, a group of buskers in Ha Noi. It is also the first product that will launch the upcoming musical project entitled Tinh Hoa Nhac Viet (Vietnamese Musical Quintessence).

"Xam, the music of blind street performers from the old days, has always been a means to express feelings and emotions. Buskers have been able to compose or extemporise songs about current affairs that the communities where they are living are concerned about," musician Nguyen Quang Long, who is also the initiator of the project, said.

"We want to continue to promote the strength of busking and contribute to raising the voice of the masses on contemporary social affairs."

Xam Tra Da is a potpourri of four main songs – Tam Tri An, Dan Lang Tu Lo Giu Rung, Bo Con Bo Vo and May Bay Roi – all of which have been cleverly connected in a story told by special reporters who are also buskers. The contents of the songs refer to social events trending on television, newspapers and the Internet.

The video begins with the scene of a young man (played by singer Nguyen Shan) riding a motorbike along familiar streets around Sword Lake. He stops at an iced tea stall.

There he meets two friends (played by singers Quang Long and Khuong Cuong) and has a chat about hot current issues, including the behaviour of the youth when the free water park opened early this summer, the bravery of Bahnar ethnic people in the central Gia Lai Province in protecting their forests, the rising numbers of young mothers who are abandoning their newborns and also airline safety.

Explaining the title of the music video, Long said the iced tea stall has become a distinctive image of Ha Noi and also a popular rendezvous point for Hanoians during their free time. The topics discussed at the stalls are also as current as broadcasted in any official channel. This was the inspiration for the video being named Iced Tea Busking.

"Xam Tra Da is being broadcast mainly via YouTube, a public channel where people can freely share information with each other. We producers plan to cover news about traffic, currently a hot issue, in the next episode of Xam Tra Da, which is expected to be finished in the next two months," Long said.

"We hope to create a fresh and lively image of modern xam, so that it is closer to life and somehow meets the present demands for entertainment. Everyone can see several interesting features hidden in our traditional arts."

The EU Delegation to Viet Nam gave five quiz participants from Ha Noi, HCM City and Da Nang awards yesterday for answering questions about climate change on its Facebook page.

The quiz, which ran between June 18 and 24, gathered more than 1,000 entries.

Each day the delegation asked two multiple-choice and one open-ended question. The open questions touched on different climate change issues relevant to Viet Nam, including the impact of climate change in Viet Nam, how to educate children about saving energy, and ways to reduce the use of plastic bags and carbon dioxide emissions caused by motorised vehicles.

"I am delighted to see that so many Vietnamese, especially young people, have enthusiastically participated in the quiz," said Franz Jessen, ambassador of the EU Delegation to Viet Nam at the award ceremony.

"This shows the awareness and concern Vietnamese people have about climate change – a pressing issue the whole world is facing."

The five winners were awarded bamboo bikes produced by a Vietnamese company, Mekong Creations, which is sponsored by the EU Delegation and the embassies of Denmark, France, Germany and the Netherlands.

The quiz was part of a series of events organized by the EU Delegation to Viet Nam in collaboration with EU Member States' embassies of Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and the UK to mark European Climate Diplomacy Day on June 17.

Cam Luong Holy Fish Cave to welcome 250,000 tourists

The management board of the Cam Luong Holy Fish Cave in the north-central province of Thanh Hoa targets more than 250,000 visitors this year.

Since the beginning of this year, more than 100,000 people have visited the beautiful site.

Infrastructure around the site has been upgraded, and tourist guides have been trained and security has been ensured. Local residents are also encouraged to raise livestock and plant vegetables to meet tourist demand.

US-backed film competition on wildlife protection calls for entries in Vietnam

Individuals and groups are all welcome to share their filmmaking passion and resolve in combating sinister crime against wildlife by submitting their short films to an ongoing competition organized as part of the Vietnam-US liaison in the relentless fight.

The WildFest film contest, which was launched on June 22 in Hanoi, receives entries from now until August 31.

The competition accepts recently produced films of up to seven minutes in duration.

The films are meant to promote awareness, knowledge and understanding of wildlife and their habitat, and effectively address issues related the illegal wildlife trade and rhino horn consumption through their powerful messages to the relevant target audiences.

Entries are to be submitted to http://www.wildfest.org, or via YouTube, Google Drive and Vimeo.

On October 1, the jury will select the most riveting films to be part of the “Official Selection,” where they will compete for the top three awards.

The winning films will premiere at the WildFest awards ceremony, slated to be held on November 1 at the Imperial Citadel of Thang Long, located in downtown Hanoi.

The film competition will also feature an exclusive premiere of flicks created by three acclaimed filmmakers, Nguyen Hoang Dung, Nguyen Hoang Diep and Vietnamese-American director Bao Nguyen.

Diep’s “Dap Canh Giua Khong Trung” (Flapping in the Middle of Nowhere) won Best Film in the International Critics’ Week – a program for debut films at the 2014 Venice International Film Festival – as well as a handful of other international prizes.

Nguyen’s debut long documentary “Live from New York!” was selected to open the Tribeca Film Festival, one of the US’s largest annual independent events, in April.

These three directors also sit on the WildFest jury.

Famed Vietnamese actress Hong Anh, Vietnamese-American director Charlie Nguyen, newspaper editor Anh Tuan and video jockey Thuy Minh have been named WildFest ambassadors.

WildFest is part of Operation Game Change (OGC), which is a joint alliance between Vietnam and the US to have broad appeal and influence the public regarding illegal wildlife issues in Vietnam, particularly to stop rhino horn trafficking.

“We want WildFest to encourage creative approaches to tackling the illegal wildlife trade, and would like to encourage anyone who is passionate about using films to make a difference to enter this competition,” Lisa Bess Wishman, representative of the US Embassy, said at a recent workshop in Hanoi within the OGC framework.

Sulma Warne, deputy director of Asia-based Freeland Foundation, the OGC’s co-organizer, said that apart from rhinos, he encourages WildFest filmmakers to also focus on humans’ devastating power against other breeds, including wood and certain flora varieties.

Freeland is a frontline organization working for a world that is free of wildlife trafficking and human slavery.

“I really don’t want to see a Vietnamese or Chinese flag erected where a rhino is killed. People at seminars on rhinos often ask if any participants are Vietnamese, which really upsets me,” Nguyen My Dung, a trained Vietnamese filmmaker and wildlife protector with loads of experience in interacting with wildlife in South Africa, revealed at one of the workshops.

Under the OGC campaign, governments, NGOs, students, and celebrities from Vietnam, the US, and South Africa are working  together to curb the illegal trade in rhino horn while encouraging everyone to cease buying all endangered species.

The OGC will culminate with a nationally televised event and concert in September to coincide with World Rhino Day (September 22).

According to Freeland Foundation, China, the US, and Vietnam are three countries that lead the world in consuming products coming from the illegal trade of wildlife.

Clip makers apologize for ‘kiss cam’ joke

A group of clip makers have recently made an apology for their video, strongly criticized for its controversial content about a joke called “kiss cam.”

It might sound the same but it is actually completely different from the well-known namesake social game at sporting events in the U.S. and Canada in which a “kiss cam” camera scans the crowd and selects a couple then they are invited to kiss each other and their kiss will be shown on a big screen.

The new “kiss cam” game in Vietnam was recorded in the video titled “Kiss cam: Một ngày dạo phố” (Kiss cam: A day around the city) posted on YouTube on June 23.

The footage captured the game players shouting out the word “kiss cam” in front of the camera, driving around Ho Chi Minh City to look for their “targets,” and then suddenly giving them a surprise kiss on their lips before running away.

Her boyfriend is about to attack the kisser.

The video was the Vietnamese version of a clip in which several young Western people, who were playing the “kiss cam” joke, kissed strange people on streets and then fled away.

The Vietnamese version got published on YouTube a few days after the foreign video was shared widely on social media.

The Vietnamese clip has received tons of criticism from people who said the joke was unacceptable to local culture.

“It’s good to imitate civilized cultures but you must understand what you’re going to do,” Le Minh commented on YouTube. “What is copied must be tailored to suit Vietnamese culture.”

“Lip kissing is an important act in the Vietnamese context,” he added. “It’s only for lovers, between husbands and wives, and it often takes place in private.”

Minh said the unthinking imitation reflects the clip makers’ mindlessness.

Meanwhile, others expressed their concerns over the risk of diseases spreading via the kisses or even the affray possibly triggered by the joke.

Lawyer Nguyen Van Hau, vice president of the Ho Chi Minh City Lawyers Association, said that the joke was considered offensive in Vietnamese culture and adversely influenced public lifestyle.

Dao Le Hoa An, director of strategy at the Y Tuong Viet life skill training center, even regarded the joke as public sexual abuse.

He said kissing is a private thing in Vietnam and people cannot kiss strangers on streets just for fun.

“If you suddenly kiss somebody without their permission, the act could be considered an instance of public sexual abuse,” he emphasized.

The girl's boyfriend threw his shoes at the kisser after this scene.

A representative of the group told Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper on June 26 that the video was made by a team of 20 people.

He said after every kissing scene, they did apologize to the people who were kissed and explained that the group was only making a trendy and funny video.

The main purpose of the video primarily was bringing fun to everybody, then showing young people that which foreign cultural behavior should or should not be re-enacted in Vietnam, he explained.

“We initially wanted to make a funny video and we also imagined that things could go wrong,” the group representative said.

He added that the team members had not thought that the public would vent such strong criticism even though they had anticipated that the video would be in the spotlight.

“We apologized for that and will take it as a lesson so that our group will produce better content in the future,” he added.

The video is currently no long available on YouTube.

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