VietNamNet Bridge – In late 2010, the HCM City Television Film Studio (TFS) won the first prize at the Festival for Photos, Documentaries and Reportages of ASEAN’s Land and People for its discovery-styled documentary named “Mekong Chronicle”.


The documentary impressed TV program producers in the region. Earlier, the documentary was praised by local audiences.

The success of “Mekong Chronicle” has paved the way for the formation and development of the discovery documentary genre in Vietnam. This genre of documentary has been very famous on Discovery Channel and National Graphic for a long time but in Vietnam it is new.

When “Mekong Chronicle” was aired in 2004, it was not arranged in the golden era of television documentaries, but the documentary series attracted large numbers of viewers. The producer sold more than 60,000 DVDs while the series was on the air. This was a record at that time.

With 20-minute 70 episodes, the show aired the discovery process of the 4,800km Mekong River, which runs through six countries, and brought together different audiences from different cultures. The mysterious river with wild and fabulous scenes could keep the attention of any audience.

The series won the Golden Kite Award 2005 for documentary and many television awards. It also won the heart of the audience who thought that Vietnamese documentaries are boring and filled with propaganda. “Mekong Chronicle” has created a breakthrough for Vietnamese documentaries.

After the success of “Mekong Chronicle”, several discovery series have been broadcasted on channels of the HCM City Television (HTV), including “Railway Chronicle – Trans-continental Itinerary”, “Amazon Chronicle”, “Mystery of Ganga River”, “Following Uncle Ho’s Steps”, “Return to Volga”, “Along the Mississippi River”, “New Caledonia Chronicle” and “Following Three Kings”.

Nguyen Viet Hung, Director of the HCM City Television Film Studio (TFS), the agency produced the above documentary series, said: “The formation and development of discovery films on HTV is indispensable. TFS produced this genre of documentary with a plan. Before 2000, TFS produced “China Travel”, “Still Living Cuba”, “Splendid Paris”, etc. as experiments to acquire experience to produce “Mekong Chronicle”. The success of “Mekong River” has urged HTV and TFS to develop this genre of documentary, which is attractive but difficult”.

If “Mekong Chronicle” paved the way for discovery documentaries of Vietnam, documentaries about other rivers like Amazon, Volga and Ganga continue to attract the audience. Learning from TFS, other firms also produce discovery documentaries.

Saigon Market Film has produced over 300 episodes of discovery documentaries for HTV9 channel’s “Discovery Steps” and VTV4’s “Vietnam Today”. Outstanding series include “Through the Land of Buddhism”, “Discovering the End-of-the-world Land”, “Discovering Vietnamese Rivers”, “Small Ethnic Groups in the Jungle” and “New Calendonia Chronicle”. Saigon Market Film’s documentary series are impressive for their truthfulness and liveliness.

The national Vietnam Television (VTV) chose a different way by producing discovery scientific documentaries about nature, with “Blue turtles in Con Dao Island”, “Stories about Snake”, “The Call of Cat Ba Langurs” aired on VTV2 channel. These documentaries have beautiful scenes that are comparable to those on Discovery Channel.

Some private firms also produce discovery documentaries, for example BHD company with “Following Steps of Three Kings”, Lasta with “Journey to the Everest”, Dolphin Media with “Thang Long Chronicle”, Mekong Film with “Project to Discover Vietnam”.

Provincial television stations have joined the race to produce discovery films. The pioneer is Vinh Long Province Television Station with “Living Rhythm of the Delta”, which featuring the life of the people in the Mekong Delta. Vinh Long is among several local stations that self produces discovery series to serve its audience, with “Impression of the Central Highlands”, “Along Vinh Te River” and “Overseas Chronicle”.

Recently, Dong Thap Province Television Station has lured the audience with “Dong Thap – Land and People”, “Beloved Laos” and “Through Memory”.

Thai Nguyen Province Television Station also has “Thai Nguyen People in Hanoi” and “Viet Bac”.

Many chronicles about Hanoi were produced in 2010 to celebrate the 1000th anniversary of Thang Long-Hanoi, such as: “Thang Long-Hanoi: 1000 Years of Love” by TFS, “The Way to Thang Long – Hanoi” by Dong Thap Province Television Station, “Thang Long Chronicle” by VTV and Dolphin Media, “Talents of Thang Long”, “Thien Do Chronicle”, etc.

“Discovery documentaries have become a popular genre in Vietnam. This is a good signal. However, this is just the beginning. We need more time to prove the value of Vietnamese discovery documentaries,” said scriptwriter Nguyen Ho, former Director of TFS, who participated in producing many chronicle documentaries.

Actually, the genre of discovery documentary only develops in number, not quality. Until now, “Mekong Chronicle” is still considered the best of its kind. The freshness and attractiveness of “Mekong Chronicle” is not seen in many discovery documentaries. Besides some good products like “Ganga River Chronicle” and “Along the Mississippi River,” some others like “Railway Chronicle”, “Amazon are similar travel films. The ups and downs of the quality of chronicle films has posed a big question about the development of this genre.

It is unfair to require all chronicle documentaries to be as good as “Mekong Chronicle” because this series was produced in five years while others were made in several months.

However, in the time when the audience can easily watch discovery films made by world famous producers or get any information or knowledge they want from the Internet, discovery films must be real “discoveries”.

PV