Lighter than Orange – The Legacy of Dioxin in Vietnam

Lighter than Orange-The Legacy of Dioxin in Vietnam is a documentary by the Berlin filmmaker Matthias Leupold about the long-term consequences of American warfare in Vietnam.[1] The film was shot in Vietnam in 2012 and has been subtitled in English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Vietnamese and Russian. The film documents stories of Vietnamese veterans and their families who are affected by the gene damage caused by the defoliant Agent Orange. It contained 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzodioxin.

Vietnamese Veterans in the Vietnam Friendship Village, 2012

Content

Many films critically report on the time of the American war in Vietnam. The biographies of the Vietnamese veterans who survived the war, but who still suffer from the consequences of the use of Agent Orange, have so far mostly been left out. The film presents the fates of former Vietnamese soldiers and lets those affected have their say who have so far received little public attention. They exemplify more than three million Agent Orange victims about their experiences and the cruel consequences for their families - consequences of political failure. Ms. Nguyễn Thị Ngọc Hạnh (volunteer in the Vietnamese Association of Agent Orange Victims in the province of Nng Nai) reports in this documentary about current new illnesses near Ho Chi Minh City / Saigon in Biên Hòa, a hot spot A place where the concentration of dioxin in the soil and waters is still particularly high today.[2][3]

Aesthetically, the film corresponds to its content orientation: it lives from the reserved images of humble Vietnamese veterans and popular songs sung. The title “Lighter than Orange” is a reference to the changes in the genome brought back from the war zones by the returnees, which, unlike actual war trophies, had no weight.[2]

A large part of the film was shot in March 2012 in the Vietnam Friendship Village, on the western outskirts of Hanoi in the formerly rural Hoài Đức district. The project was financed with private funds from Leupold Film Production Berlin and from the Stiftung Umverteilen (Stiftung für eine solidarische Welt) and the Hamburg Foundation Asienbrücke, as well as from the Technical University of Applied Sciences in Berlin. It goes back to records that Felix Klickermann made in the Village of Friendship in 2009. The Vietnamese Germanist Nhung Lương Tuyết accompanied the recording work in 2012 and took over the extensive translation work in the following years. The German-American artist and translator Julia Metzger-Traber worked on the project on a voluntary basis from 2013 to 2017. The Vietnamese title is ĐIỂM LẶNG, which means in English: ″Quiet point″.[2]

Selection of festival participations

Lighter than Orange received the Grand Prize Documentary Feature Award of SR - Socially Relevant Film Festival New York in 2015 at the Maysles Documentary Center.[4][5]

Other festival participations:

  • New York Independent Film Festival[2]

TV broadcasts

2015, via Deutsche Welle, worldwide: German, English, Spanish and Arabic.[6][7]

References
  1. Manon Priebe, Axel Wagner: Spätfolgen von Agent Orange im Vietnam-Krieg–Krieg hört nie auf In: Chrismon, 23 January 2014.
  2. Alexia Amoriello: Lighter than Orange. Review. New York City Independent Film Festival, 2015. // Alexia Amoriello: Lighter than Orange. Review. New York City Independent Film Festival, 2015.
  3. Emily Green: Ghosts of Agent Orange: The notorious defoliant continues to ravage generations of Vietnamese. In: Street Roots News, 10 May 2014.
  4. Lighter than Orange New York Premiere 18 May 2015, Maysles Documentary Center.
  5. Louis Proyect: Films on the Lives of Ordinary People. In: CounterPunch, March 13, 2015.
  6. Rodion Ebbinghausen: The long shadow of the Vietnam War: The Documentary ″Lighter Than Orange″ In: Deutsche Welle, 8 July 2015.
  7. Lighter than Orange – Die Hinterlassenschaft von Dioxin in Vietnam In: Deutsche Welle, 26 November 2015.
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