Agnès Houghton-Boyle reviews the playful, independent post-lockdown films of the Saigon Experimental Film Festival, curated by Phạm Nguyễn Anh Tú.
The Saigon Experimental Film Festival has established itself as a prominent international platform for avant-garde cinema from Ho Chi Minh City and across Vietnam. Founded and curated by experimental filmmaker, Phạm Nguyễn Anh Tú, the festival aims to share Vietnam’s burgeoning video art scene with an international audience. Each year, the festival presents a one to two-day event, featuring a selection of short films that push the boundaries of narration, editing, and visual content, carefully curated from a diverse international pool of online submissions. The special screening titled Me, Myself and I, held at Peckham’s SET Social last month, showcased works from previous festival editions alongside films distributed and circulated on the internet (linked in this article). The festival’s coordinator, Maria Sowter, pointed out to me that the work emerging from this region is particularly DIY and conceptual in approach. The films that were screened were an amalgam of very short, highly experimental projects, made innovatively on minimal budgets – by (often very) young artists. With a strong focus on themes of power and rebellion the programme was invigorating and reflected the dynamic creative spirit of the artists in this region.
The opening film, Grimoire II: A Servant's Quest by Javier Fabregas (2024), perfectly set the tone for the festival, by drawing inspiration from the classic Golden Era Games, dungeon-crawling Grimoire. Emulating the simplicity of nostalgic game design with beautifully intricate and symbolic line art that pulses and pixelates on the screen, the film uses this retro aesthetic to evoke a nostalgic reflection on themes of power, control, and subversion. Set in an ancient Pangea, the narrative introduces two races born from a totem erupting from the earth—the privileged Children of Water and the oppressed Children of Mud. Through interactive elements reminiscent of classic RPGs, the film takes us through the Children of Mud’s communistic uprising against their oppressors and their struggle for liberation. Profound and emotionally charged questions such as ‘Could any of you fully commit to this power? Could any of you bear the burden of my children’s deaths? YES | NO’ invite richly indulgent contemplation. Perhaps such raw feelings are what we need to reconnect with our experiences and challenges.
Javier Fabregas, Grimoire II: A Servant's Quest, 2024, stills
Another film which stood out was Trân Uy Dúc’s defiant experimental video Catwalk (2023), for its provocative and thought-provoking use of contradiction. The film opens with an avant-garde techno style, blending raw metallic noise, airy drones, and flashing lights (with an ‘epilepsy warning bitch’), creating an immediate and disorienting sensory overload. This intense auditory and visual setup is sharply contrasted by the campy, almost trivial lyrics layered over the noise: “I told you not to be toxic boyfriend / you keep making excuses / in your suitcase.” Lyrics, which build anticipation for a conventional dance track, but Dúc playfully delays this shift, only introducing the traditional beat three minutes into the six-minute piece.
A distressing opening dialogue about a woman’s death—possibly linked to restrictive abortion laws—is seemingly referenced in Dúc’s lyrics: “Drink it bitch, drink it bitch, it’s toxic, it’s toxic.” The stark reference adds to the unsettling nature of the film which quickly shifts direction with playful and absurd visuals. Four women dressed as schoolgirls, business commuters, and ballerinas perform in urban settings—using the city’s underground, parks, and roads as their catwalks. They sit on the back of Grab bikes and loll on the floor while dressed in leotards, adding a layer of absurdity. Dúc further undercuts the more polished, high-production elements of the piece by drawing attention to the rough, unrefined execution of the filmmaking. He walks on a DIY treadmill catwalk which the other performers come out of character to manually fix. Spoken lines reference Ableton Live software confuse the opening sound. The women break character and laugh. It all adds to the sense of chaos. To watch Catwalk is to be immersed in its complex layers of contradiction. The shifting between high and low, polished and amateurish, leaves you piecing through its coats.
Another film that I loved was Nguyễn Vũ Trụ’s charming, four-minute short, Roach Dinner (2021). Set against the backdrop of the Covid-19 lockdown in Ho Chi Minh City, the film poignantly captures the surreality and alienation that defined this period, during which Trụ was confined to his room, isolated from human interaction, and dealing with a roach infestation. In the film, a young couple share an evening meal in their apartment. Their conversation quickly veers off-road into philosophical terrain, as the man confronts his morbid fear of cockroaches. He sees these insects, as symbols of endurance and survival, as creatures of a superior race – that have thrived for millions of years and will likely outlast humans. His reflection leads to a harrowing realisation. A realisation of our fleeting existence, the ultimately negligible impact of human actions on the world, and the grim certainty of our inevitable demise.
Nguyễn Vũ Trụ, Roach Dinner, 2021, stills
With a playful nod to the absurd and irrational elements of early surrealist cinema, the film symbolises how the pandemic has transformed our perceptions of ourselves and others. Beautiful papier-mâché headpieces completely obscure the character’s faces – his features long, entomological-snout-like tubes and hers resembles a giant star. They appear trapped behind both physical and emotional barriers. Are they even human anymore? Their bodies blended behind these gorgeous sculptures. As her partner wrestles with his grave realisations, a quivering eye can be glimpsed through a precisely cut triangular aperture in her mask. It widens with a haunting, Buñuel-esque intensity and she splits, withdraws, and disassociates while a desperate romantic pop ballad drowns out her partner’s reflections.
“Roach babe where are you? Only in your spirit do I dream of you. The roach babe in my arms. We shall reminisce this existence together. The roach babe of my dreams. As I awaken with rushing waves of regret. As humanity struggles on. I shall wait for the light beyond this dimension.”
It is a strikingly beautiful image, coupled with the surreal and oddly poetic song which highlights her own profound loneliness and struggle to find meaning in this constrained environment. I loved the earnest, dramatic tone of the piece, its histrionic lockdown commentary, and its exploration of isolation and existential angst.
Another pandemic-era film that explores themes of intrusion and observation during lockdown is Trần Phước Hải Quỳnh’s Behind Those Walls (2022). Reminiscent of Věra Chytilová's Daisies, the film follows two whimsical girls navigating the pressures of societal expectations. The film opens with the girls in bright rubber gloves playfully mimicking domestic tasks. One swishes her hands in canal water, with images of pots and pans amusingly superimposed in a DIY attempt at CGI, while a distracted voice-over lists familial roles—“daughter, mother, maternal grandmother.” Sound effects of smashing glass accompany their playful sweeping motions as the narrator explains that women are cunningly taught to seduce men for protection.
Trần Phước Hải Quỳnh, Behind Those Walls, 2022, stills
Are they caught under the giant scrutinising eye of society, or something else? From within their house, hallucinogenic figures and giant plastic toys peer at them from behind tall building walls. The girls embark on a surreal quest to discover who is spying on them. In a strange meta-commentary on freedom and constraint, it turns out their higher selves were observing them all along. These higher selves chide the girls for eating chips and wearing dirty clothes, urging them to pull themselves together, while clips of a caged tiger and a surgical scene flit across the screen. Described by the filmmaker as a “bullshit story about girls in isolation,” the film is a delightfully absurdist and wildly artistic expression of rebellion. I loved this film the most; it felt like the kind of wonderful female-led zine the Cahyati Press team would publish.
It was a true pleasure experiencing the selection of playful, independent post-lockdown films that Tu had curated for this screening - and especially to learn about the city’s dynamic young artistic community. I do feel that these insights could have been shared with the audience in an introduction which profiled their makers and helped shine a brighter spotlight on Vietnam’s emerging video art scene for an international audience. Nonetheless, I’m excited to see what the festival will showcase next. Its future projects promise to continue pushing the boundaries of experimental short film.
Agnès Houghton-Boyle is a critic and programmer based in London. Her writing features in Talking Shorts Magazine and Fetch London.
