Films about Vietnam’s beauty hit the world’s screens in 2007

In January 2007, a group of cameramen together with four famous Japanese actors from Japanese Chukyo TV channel flew to HCM City to make a film on Vietnam’s cuisine. The film is about the trip of Japanese travellers who came to Vietnam to seek delicious dishes. The travelers had the chance to taste a lot of Vietnamese traditional cuisine, including thit nuong (roast meat), bun bo (beef noodle soup), pho (noodle soup), and ruou can (wine drunk out of a jar through pipes).

The 85 minute film was broadcast throughout Japan at 10 am on January 22, 2008.

In March 2007, Wini Brugger, the famous cook, owner of ‘Indonechine 21’, an Austrian restaurant, together with many famous cooks, prepared Vietnamese original cuisine at a 5-star hotel in HCM City. And his images, a part of the documentary film, advertising for his book about Vietnam’s cuisine, was later broadcast on TV channels in Austria, Germany and Switzerland.

Mr Brugger began having the passion for Vietnam’s cuisine after he traveled to Vietnam. He once stayed at Sofitel Metropople in Hanoi and tasted Vietnamese dishes. The talks with the hotel’s French Chef Didier Corlou urged him to learn more about Vietnam’s cuisine.

The documentary film watchers might see Mr Brugger going to Vietnam’s traditional market to buy food for making cha ca (fried fish), and going to ancient streets of Hanoi which he cannot see elsewhere in the world.

In July 2007, Robert Tate and Tom Vitale, the producers for PBS’ “Gourmet’s Diary of a Foodie”, also arrived in Vietnam to shoot the pictures of Vietnamese cuisine, which will be broadcast on PBS and National Geographic this autumn. The reporters said that they were very interested in eco-tourism in Vietnam, especially the visits to Ben Tre orchards in the south. The process of making keo dua (coconut candy) drew much attention from the film crew.

Vietnam also welcomed a lot of foreign film crews, who came to shoot film about Ha Long Bay, which has been nominated for selection as one of the seven natural wonders of the world.

On October 10, 2007, the 30-second television commercial introducing Vietnam as an attractive destination for travelers began being broacast regularly on CNN Asia. The broadcasting will last three months, until January 13, 2008 on the channel at peak viewing time.

The 30-second advertisement was made by a professional team of CNN’s with modern technology. In the film, lively and colorful images of Vietnam with beautiful landscapes, friendly people, arts and cuisine appear. Vietnamese ao dai (long dress), Hanoi’s and Hoi An’s ancient streets, the world’s heritage Ha Long Bay, and dynamic HCM City appear in the advertisement piece.

2008 with ‘ship of dreams’

On January 10, 2008, a group of German ZDF TV channel’s staff returned to Vietnam, because they decided to make the film about Vietnam’s tourism after a lot of fact-finding trips.

The film is a part of the TV channel’s series, which tells about a German trip to many places in the world, and Vietnam will be its destination in 2008.

In fact, Vietnam is the second destination in Asia of the German ship. In 2007, the filming crew arrived in Shanghai and shot pictures there. In the film, a couple travels to Vietnam on the ‘ship of dreams’ in their honey moon and they make a lot of interesting discoveries about the country with hidden charms.

The group went to Ha Long Bay, Hoi An ancient town and Cuu Long River Delta to look for the landscapes for filming. A lot of beautiful landscapes of Hoi An, which once appeared on “A quiet American’ film, will also be seen in the German TV film.

The screenplay authors related that they started to write the screenplay for the film right after they left Vietnam for Macau and Hong Kong, because they were so impressed with Vietnam’s landscapes, and they didn’t want to start later, when they returned home. Sung Sot (Surprise) cave and Titov island at Ha Long Bay, Hoi An and the floating market in the Cuu Long River Delta will be the background for the film.

According to film director Khanh Toan, who escorted the filming crew, Director Franz Buchs was very impressed with what he could see in Ha Long Bay: “Ha Long is surprisingly wonderful”.

Gerd Zimmemal, the German Director said that German people still think that Vietnam is the country of wars, though wars have gone away. Very few people know that Vietnam has enormous cultural heritage. Vietnam has a lot of beautiful landscapes that European people do not know about. “We want to let European people know about the hidden charms of Vietnam”.

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Hoi An olden

Ho Chi Minh City

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