Mary Queen of Vietnam, an hour-long documentary by Côte Blanche Productions, offers a lively look at one of Louisiana’s and America’s most fascinating but least understood ethnic cultures by going inside the community surrounding Mary Queen of Vietnam Catholic Church in eastern New Orleans as it prepares for its huge annual Tet Festival.
The film will be screened at the New Orleans Film Festival on Tuesday, November 9, 6 p.m., and Thursday, November 11, 6 p.m., at AMC Elmwood Palace 20. The documentary can also be streamed online as part of a virtual cinema experience from November 5–21.
Through raucous public celebrations, private, never-before-filmed rituals, and daily life at work, at school, and at home, Mary Queen of Vietnam explores an immigrant community in transition by following multiple Vietnamese-Americans from three different generations. Viewers meet the original asylum-seeking “boat people” who fled their war-torn homeland. Nonwhite, non-English-speaking, penniless, they nonetheless built a thriving new home in America. This is followed by a younger, second generation—a college coed, a high school football player, a singer in a wedding band—each almost (but definitely not quite) fully Americanized. The film also includes the generation in between, born in Vietnam but arriving here as children. Had they been Latino/Latina, they’d be called “dreamers,” and their dreams illustrate the twisting journey from foreign-born roots to American aspirations.
The heart of the film is the lunar new year Tet Festival. Endless tables of exotic foods, acrobatic lion dancers, in-your-face fireworks, backstage organized chaos, and elaborate pageantry in traditional costumes are interwoven with Vegas-style lounge acts singing in Vietnamese on the grounds of a Catholic church in the Vietnamese enclave of New Orleans East. As the community mounts this huge celebration, each person selected by the filmmakers plays a role.
Offering a thought-provoking, if sidelong, reflection on America’s current debate over immigration, through colorful spectacle and fascinating characters, Mary Queen of Vietnam showcases one version of what assimilation looks like in 21st-century America.
Writer-producer Glen Pitre is the renowned Cut Off, Louisiana-born, Harvard-educated writer, producer and director of numerous big screen dramas, cable thrillers, PBS documentaries, IMAX films, and immersive installations. His movies have played in theaters and on TV worldwide, been lauded at festivals such as Sundance and Cannes, and won countless awards, even earning Pitre a knighthood from France, Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. <
Director of Photography Bao Ngo is a Vietnam-born, New Orleans-based filmmaker equally at home shooting intimate moments and public spectacle. As a member of the community featured in this film, he brings unparalleled access, perspective, and cultural sensitivity to the project. Blending an instinct toward the quirky with rigorous filmmaking discipline, Mary Queen of Vietnam is his first national project as director.
Narrator Thanh Truong was born in Vietnam and raised in New York. As correspondent for NBC Nightly News and the Today Show, he filed reports from the war in Afghanistan, the BP oil spill, and the Democratic convention that nominated Barack Obama. He is currently an anchorman for WWL-TV New Orleans.
For more information about the film and other documentaries produced by Pitre’s Côte Blanche Productions visit here. For the complete schedule of screenings at the New Orleans Film Festival, visit here.
Watch the trailer for Mary Queen of Vietnam.
