"Over the past two years, both documentaries have been running through the film circuits to much critical acclaim, with "We Were the Scenery" winning the Short Film Jury Prize in Nonfiction at Sundance and the Special Jury Prize for Documentary Short at the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival, as well as a recent Oscar nomination. Meanwhile, New Wave was an official selection"
"Radcliff's focuses on the writer and National Book Award Finalist Cathy Linh Che's parents, two Vietnam War refugees who were stranded in a camp in the Philippines and wound up being extras in Francis Ford Coppola's 1979 Apocalypse Now. But rather than rehashing Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, which inspired Coppola, we instead reorient our attention to the memory of these two charming people, whose own wartime traumas were"
Archival work has a place in historical recovery and cultural self-understanding, but not every artwork must be archival and politics should not end with presence instead of action. A double documentary screening at Welcome to Chinatown featured Christopher Radcliff's 15-minute short "We Were the Scenery" (2025) and Elizabeth Ai's New Wave: Rebellion and Reinvention in the Vietnamese Diaspora (2024). Both films have circulated widely on the festival circuit and won awards and recognition. Radcliff's short focuses on Cathy Linh Che's parents, Vietnam War refugees who became extras in Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now. Ai's film examines California's Vietnamese New Wave, a localized Euro disco and synth-pop phenomenon in the 1980s and 1990s.
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