FILM COMMENT Editor Hitchens occasionally travels in East Europe and sees films from North Vietnam and from the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam.

At the Leipzig festival, I tape-recorded a long interview with a group of five persons: Le Huan, director of documentaries, North Vietnam; Ngoan Dang Tran, Third Secretary and Cultural Attache, North Vietnamese Embassy, German Democratic Republic; Phan Dinh, student of North Vietnam; Vu Nam, documentary director, National Liberation Front, South Vietnam; Tran Hnn Kha, also of the NLF.

One of the first questions concerned the degree to which American bombing in North Vietnam had reduced the exhibition of films.

Le Huan’s reply: “We can say that there are not the big obstacles that you possibly imagine. We can show our films quite normally. Our population likes to see films, and they can see them at the cinemas either by day or by night. We can say that this happens without any limits. There are films not only about the liberation struggle, but also about the peaceful life of our population. This is the situation in North Vietnam. But for the situation in South Vietnam, I’ve heard from my comrades there that films are shown even in the immediate war areas. They have organized small groups of the population, and these groups can see the films at any place we show these films.”

I mentioned having seen in New York an NLF film showing a tiny primitive lab being used in the jungle. The reply: “About these labs, you mustn’t imagine that there are factories or anything like that. They are all very small labs in the jungle because big labs are not very movable. Sometimes these are used at hidden places, in bunkers, for instance. But we can say that during the war, these activities have been enlarged and are growing.”

I asked the group if many foreign film makers are at work in North Vietnam and in the parts of South Vietnam not occupied by the Americans.

“During this period of liberation, there are a lot of journalists and camera crews from all over the world in North Vietnam and in South Vietnam, and among them are progressive American journalists and cameramen. There are representatives of France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy and our friends from the Socialist countries. They’ve made films there, they’ve covered the events, and they’ve got all the facilities and the permission to go around to the corners of our country, in order to be able to say the truth about our life—for instance, Madeleine Riffaud, the lady who made very excellent films about our life.”

The group asked how American television reported the war to American audiences. I stated that several films seen here were made by foreigners—the CBC film, MILLS OF THE GODS, by Beryl Fox of Canada, and ANDERSON’S PLATOON, by Pierre Schoendorfer of France. But generally few foreign documentaries can be seen on American television despite the great quantity of good material available at reasonable cost from British and German television and elsewhere. I stated that whether American or foreign, the television documentaries seen here cannot, or simply do not, criticize the American government boldly. At best, the films may attempt some irony in the narration or the editing that could be construed as a subtle comment on the curious American admixture of ruthlessness and tenderness. Repeatedly and unimaginatively, many American documentaries fall back upon the “Day in the life of” format—centering typically on one squad of American soldiers at its average day’s work, with all those familiar stereotypes: the homesick GI nursing his Letter-From-Home, the tough cigar-chewing sergeant (all the better if he’s Negro), and the rock-jawed idealistic cruel-only-to-be kind young officer. Cameras today are humanizing the abstractions of battle-statistics by showing us the fighting-men down in the mud and blood, but cameras must also ask why—this American documentaries about Vietnam are not doing. Our television films horizontally spread out over the panorama of the war but do not go vertically and deeply into its causes.

The reply: “We don’t know what films are shown on American television, but we know that it is very difficult to show the truth about Vietnam. We are sure that there are progressive forces in America that try to inform the American population properly about the truth in Vietnam. We must make clear that the fighters against American aggressors are the entire population of Vietnam, from the southern part and from the north. Our population will succeed in chasing out the American aggressors. It is quite normal that the American government tries to hide all these defeats. There are more and more people who support our struggle, but we must state that the burden lies on the shoulders of the Vietnamese people in the south and the north of our country. Although they are very wealthy, we don’t believe the American aggressors are strong enough to win this war. The more the U.S. attempts to destroy Vietnam, the more the hatred becomes greater and greater. But we know very well the difference between the government of America and the people of America. We appreciate the progressive forces in your population.

“Life is going on in Vietnam—all phases of production despite the destruction. As you saw in one film here, the school was destroyed but classes continued. And surely you will have noticed how the French film, TO LIVE ON A BOMB, shows the cruelty of the crimes of the U.S. aggressors. This was not the main content of the film, although you saw children and women killed, as well as men. The French film did not express the following figures: destroyed by U.S. air attacks in North Vietnam in the last two years were 8 towns, 72 villages, 27 market-places, 110 churches and pagodas, 74 hospitals and 294 schools—in one attack on one town, 54 students died, and 35 students in another attack.

“As our great president Ho Chi Minh has said, this struggle can go on for 10 or 20 years more—but we are growing stronger. We know very well that the reactionary American government tries to suppress the truth about Vietnam and works against the progressive American cinemas that show films about American cruelty, especially napalm. We know that these American crimes exceed the crimes committed by the German fascists during the Second World War.”

The Vietnamese group mentioned several American films critical of our government. “But the films don’t sufficiently show the victories of the National Liberation Front—there are a lot in all the fighting areas.”

The group strongly objected to the use of the term, Viet Cong. “That is an expression of the U.S. imperialists. You must use this occasion to inform the American public about this term. You’ve got to say—the soldiers and the government of the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam.”

The group stated that in the preceding few months, 43,000 U.S. soldiers were killed and 200,000 mercenaries—Saigon government soldiers, Koreans and others. I showed them a current issue of The New York Times which printed the U.S. government figures for American casualties for that week—127 killed. They replied: “Of course, these figures are not true. The lies of the American government have been remarked in the U.S. press and even in Congress. To date, 1,600 U.S. planes have been shot down over North Vietnam.” I showed them an item from the current L’Humanite, the French Communist newspaper, giving the official U.S. government figure of 400 airplane losses as of that date.

The group spoke of the aid given the Vietnamese by the film makers of the German Democratic Republic—on one occasion alone, they received 3 16mm cameras, 8 light meters, 200,000 feet of b/w stock. Defa, the GDR producers, made 60 prints of U.S. CRIMES IN VIETNAM, which was produced by the NLF.

The group added that the NLF film team is called “Liberation” and they produce various documentaries, trick-films (animation), and other shorts, all supported by NLF funds and using small labs throughout South Vietnam that work co-operatively. The North Vietnamese similarly made such films, but also educational and popular-science films and full-length dramatic feature films. One of the features, THE RISING STORM, is presently available in New York from the U.S. Committee To Aid The National Liberation Front of South Vietnam, Box C, Old Chelsea Station, New York 10011, tel. (212) YU 27162. This same New York group, which is headed by Walter Teague, Jr., also rents a considerable number of documentaries from North Vietnam and from the NLF.