Song to the Front (2011) dir. Trinh Thi Nguyen

This is the first from the intended Vietnamese Classics ReCut Series by Nguyen Trinh Thi (2011). The original film, Bài ca ra trận, was produced in 1973 by the Vietnam Feature Film Studio. Song to the Front abstracts a featurelength 1970s Vietnamese war propaganda film and its aesthetic and political elements into a 5minute vignette. Set to Stravinskys The Rite of Spring, which represented a sacred pagan ritual in preChristian Russia where a young girl dances herself to death to propitiate the god of Spring, Song deconstructs the melodramatic and romanticized elements of the original socialrealist drama. Playing with the original plot line in an ambiguous manner, the filmmaker desires an imaginative space for the viewers reinterpretation of the historical event and perspective.