At the first-ever Da Nang Asian Film Festival - DANAFF I in 2023 jointly organised by the Da Nang People's Committee and the Viet Nam Association for Film Promotion and Development from May 9 to 13, in the non-competition screening category, there are four films about Da Nang.

The Le Do Theater is one of the movie screening venues within the framework of the Da Nang Asian Film Festival from May 9 to 13. Photo: THIEN DUYEN

Besides, there is also a seminar themed ‘Developing the film industry - Building a favourable film-making environment in Da Nang’. It can be said that these are favours for the host city, but it is also an opportunity for Da Nang people to reflect on the city's predestined relationship with the seventh art.

The Da Nang people once had a chance with international cinema and often proudly told each other that the Nam O village, located on the shores of the Da Nang Bay, was the first place in Viet Nam to be "filmed", because after the world’s first movie camera was invented in 1895, just a year later, in 1896, Auguste Lumière and Louis Lumière sent Gabriel Veyre to the coastal village of Nam O to make a film.

The scene of children running around Gabriel Veyre holding a camera whilst sitting on a palanquin, in this fishing village is considered the first film made in Viet Nam.

The film was screened in two short segments with a duration of less than 2 minutes, titled ‘Le Village de Namo - Panorama pris d'une chaise à porteurs’, then shown in 1900 in many parts of France and Europe as a whole during the first years in the history of world cinema.

Over recent years, the image of Da Nang has also made an impression in a number of foreign films, including films made by Asian countries, such as the Dragon Bridge that appeared in the first episode of the South Korean TV series ‘Taxi Driver 2’ whose director is  Lee Dan and screenwriter is Oh Sang Ho.

In 2015, at the 20^th Busan International Film Festival, in the category of best Asian film, the ‘Smell of Green Papaya’ film of director Tran Anh Hung, that was screened at the Cannes Film Festival in May, 1993 and won the Golden Camera Award for her debut film was ranked 66^th in the list of the 100 best Asian films.

This film is set in Saigon in the 1950s, but the main actor who plays the character Mui at the age of 20 was a French woman of Da Nang origin: Tran Nu Yen Khe, who was granddaughter of a physician Phan Chau Toan living in a house on the corner of Chu Van An and Hoang Dieu streets in Da Nang.

From 2013 to 2019, director Tran Anh Hung was often present in Da Nang, the city that hosts the annual Autumn Meeting programme. Hung came here as a companion to this film event as a trainer at a course exclusively for young directors as well as as the head of the jury to select the best film projects.

The 5^th Autumn Meeting programme in 2017 was the first year a class on art and costume design taught by actress Tran Nu Yen Khe had been hold.

And from the 2^nd Autumn Meeting in 2014, the programme started welcoming famous artistes from other Asian countries. For instance, at the 2014 event, two excellent cinematographers from South Korean cinema, Kim Hyung Koo and Lee Doo Man, went to Da Nang to lead a short course on filming.

And in 2015, Toma Ryu, the Rector of the Korean Academy of Film Arts (KAFA) and Matthew Poon, the Director of Hong Kong International Film & TV Market joined the jury to select the best film projects.

Two years later, or South Korea's most powerful female director Yim Soon Rye and Korean actress Lydia Park, who taught for many years at the KAFA, served as a trainer in a class in Da Nang.

In 2018, for the first time, representatives from two leading Japanese animation production companies, I.G Production and Mont Blanc Pictures, came to Da Nang to learn about the current situation and seek more cooperation opportunities.

For seven consecutive years, every late autumn, Da Nang has become the meeting place of many talented young filmmakers, famous directors and actors in Viet Nam and some Asian countries. Unfortunately, after two years of 2020 and 2021 interrupted by COVID-19 outbreaks, Da Nang could not host the Autumn Meeting.

Currently, Da Nang is one of three localities in Viet Nam, alongside the capital city of Ha Noi and the southern metropolis of Ho Chi Minh City that has a Cinema Association under the municipal Union of Literary and Art Associations. There is also an office of the Viet Nam Cinema Association in Da Nang.

During the years when Da Nang was under the management of the naitonal government, its cinematographers continuously reaped achievements in their profession.

Only in film events in Asia, the movie ‘Mrs Bua's Carpet’ by director Duong Mong Thu won the Ogawa Shinsuke Prize, the top prize in the Asia documentary category at the Yamagata International Film Festival in 2013.

It should also be mentioned that director Doan Hong Le who went to South Korea with ‘Father's Last Words’, a film made in the Varan style, or “direct cinema documentaries” style, was awarded in the category of Feature-length Documentaries Project at the DMZ International Film Festival in 2015.

On the occasion of the first Asian film festival to be held in Da Nang, director Le Quy Duong, the Vice President of the Viet Nam Association of Film Promotion and Development said: “In the context that the world is facing the risk of geopolitical conflicts, the upcoming Asian film festival in Da Nang is not only an opportunity to meet professional film industry in the region but also a place to express the desire for peace, creativity and solidarity of Asian film artists attending this much-awaited event. The initiative to organise the Da Nang Asian Film Festival has been agreed by the Viet Nam Association of Film Promotion and Development in collaboration with the Da Nang administration to strive for annual implementation with the desire to develop Da Nang into a an attractive cinema centre in Asia in the future'. 

Reporting by BUI VAN TIENG - Translating by A.THU