Lord David Puttnam shares thoughts on opportunities for Vietnam’s cinema to go global

Lord David Puttnam, the UK Prime Minister’s Trade Envoy to Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar, and a popular filmmaker with 10 Oscars awards and 25 BAFTA awards, last week conducted a seminar on “Opportunities for the internationalization of Vietnam’s cinema” in HCMC’s District 7 on the occasion of the on-going UK Film Week in Vietnam.

At the seminar, the veteran director/producer shared with media and local filmmakers his important message of “cinema is not a job to earn money, it’s passion.”

Asked how to promote Vietnamese movies with low-budgets to the world, Lord David Puttnam said that filmmakers do not underestimate film festivals. Some of his first movies with Alan Parker and Ridley Scott made debut at the Cannes film festival. One of those movies was Bugsy Malone (1976) directed by Alan Parker and produced by Puttnam. It was a very daring film and people at the film festival was so surprised to see it as it was a musical movie starring 12 and 13-year-old actors. Audiences made a wow and said the director knew how to make a movie. And then, Parker’s career went up. The same situation happend to Ridley Scott’s first movie – The Dualists at Cannes the next year when audiences admitted the director’s talent. With these first two films of the two directors, audiences around the world started saying that the British knew how to make movies.

“My point is you only need two or, if you are lucky, three film-makers to break out and suddenly the whole world is talking about Vietnamese cinema. And audiences will rise up for one or two successes and the confidence will flow into the country’s cinema industry and filmmakers will believe in themselves. Audiences will also believe that Vietnamese films can be successful. And when you believe, it happens,” Puttnam added.

According to Puttnam, nowadays, filmmakers have incredible advantages to make movies compared to people in the past. There are many film festivals in the world, like Sundance and the Asia Pacific Film Festival where independent filmmakers come to show their works. It doesn’t matter how big budget a movie has, but a good script, good actors and good filming techniques. Especially, the boundary in cinema can be erased when the movies’ messages are spreading to the world’s audiences.

He also shared that people who wish to make good movies need to have good preparations and practice. Creativity of a filmmaker is like muscle that needs to be regularly trained and practiced to have resilience. When people wish to have a successful film, they have to know core values and to be an honest voice of a generation to reflect society.

He also gave advice to local filmmakers to deliver the movie’s message cleverly, Instead of exposing it directly, a director needs to use another witted method. According to him, one of the movies that was able to do this method was “The story of Qiu Ju” by Zhang Yimou. Zhang used the image of actress Gong Li, a very popular star among Chinese people, to tell her character’s story in the movie and it was an extremely exciting story to people. With this method, the movie passed the censorship by authorities in China and later was widely known in the world.

Puttnam also helped solve a concern of local director/actor Cong Hau how to balance commercial and artistic elements of a movie. According to him, it’s a failure when a director puts himself in a concern of balancing these two factors. The quality of the movie will be judged by critics and experts and the

distributor will be in charge of revenue for the movie. What a director needs to do is making audiences go to the theater to see his message via that movie.

Puttnam also surprised attendees at the seminar when he unveiled his favorite Vietnamese movie “De Hoi tinh” (Let Hoi decides) as it was a commercial movie with less artistic features, according to people’s opinions. Even Puttnam himself couldn’t understand the reason but he loved the movie’s message as an audience. “De Hoi tinh” starring popular comedian Thai Hoa was directed by Vietnamese American director Charlie Nguyen and was released in 2014.

The seminar conducted by Lord David Puttnam was an opening event of the UK Film Week Festival organized by British Council Vietnam from November 4 to 12 at CGV Cinemas in Hanoi, Danang and HCMC. Award-winning films to be screened during the week include God Help the Girl (2014), Nowhere Boy (2009), Pulp (2014), Northern Soul (2014), Good Vibrations (2013), Control (2007) and Bugsy Malone (1976). Tickets can be purchased now at www.ticketbox.vn. Further information is available at http://www.britishcouncil.vn/en/events/uk-film-week-2015-music-great-britain.