May 16 – 19:00
King’s College London, Strand Campus
Vietnam, 2021
Directed by
Viet Vu
Running time
26 minutes
The Eternal Springtime is a poetic, sensual, and meditative film. In this film, Viet Vu invites us to a watery landscape composed of both still and moving images. These images not only immerse us into the aqueous milieu, but also invite us to a process of rebirth and renewal.
The film can be seen as a process of reflection on how Vietnam’s natural landscape and ecology (and by extension, its sociopolitical ecology as well) can be reinvigorated and revitalised not by erasing its colonial past but by acknowledging and working through it. In the film, Viet Vu reads a series of poems and invites his mother to perform. The film offers a rare experience of renewing our corporeal bond with our mothers through birth and ageing.
This film invokes Thích Nhất Hạnh’s beautiful idea of interbeing. For Thích, no being exists independently. Rather, the existence of each being depends on the existence of a cosmic assemblage of beings. In this sense, each being is always-already an interbeing.
– Victor Fan
Meet the director
Việt Vũ (Phạm Quang Trung) has completed a series of films and audio-visual projects across Vietnam, Portugal, Hungary, and Belgium. Working in experimental cinema, docufiction, and alternative narratives, his films uncover forgotten stories within shifting socio-political contexts, foregrounding queer themes and underrepresented communities. His practice often embraces first-person intimacy, fragments, found footage, and disrupted forms of representation. His works have been presented at major European and Asian film festivals, including Locarno, Rotterdam, and Tampere.
In 2018, his debut fiction short Ant-Man won the Most Promising Filmmaker from Southeast Asia Award at the 2nd SeaShorts Film Festival in Malaysia. In 2021, he directed the docufiction The Eternal Springtime, which premiered at International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) 2021 and qualified for an Oscars nomination after receiving the Best Documentary Award at the 66th International Cork Film Festival and Best Director at the Baku International Film Festival. In the same year, his experimental film My Own Room received the prestigious Wildcard Award from the Vlaams Audiovisueel Fonds (VAF, Belgium).
Viet earned a Master’s degree in Documentary Film Directing from DocNomads (European Erasmus Scholarship) in 2021 and was also selected as a Berlinale Talents alumnus the same year. Since September 2022, he has been doing a PhD in the Arts (Doctoral Fellowship) at ARIA/Sint Lucas Antwerpen (KdG) / University of Antwerp.
Meet the cast and crew
Starring
Nguyễn Thị Tơ
Phạm Quang Trung
Giàng A Pá
Giàng A Sưa
Hoàng Thị Tứ
Đỗ Hà Thu
Producers
Dương Diệu Linh
Việt Vũ
Production consultants
Phạm Thị Hồng Ánh
Phan Đăng Di
Writer and editor
Việt Vũ
Assistant director
Chu Ánh Nguyệt
Sound engineer and sound equipment
Quảng Khổng
Cinematographer
Huy Phùng
Camera equipment
HANOI DOCLAB
Line producer
Bùi Thu Hương
Assistant producer
Đỗ Thăng Long
Medics
Trần Xuân Trường
Hoàng Văn Vui
