Van Tran Nguyen

An imaginative telling of the story of a Vietnamese American mother-daughter duo who, in their attempt to heal the rift between them, reenact and satirize scenes from celebrated Vietnam War films while depicting a diasporic reality. Two inventive storylines complicate The MOTHERLOAD to levels of absurdity. Both of these glide in and out beneath the narrative backbone of Jessca and Kim’s personal story, and reflect the stunning disconnect between the Vietnamese diaspora and the world’s understanding of their presence.

ERIE COUNTY SMILE is a parody of "Paris By Night (PBN)", a popular Vietnamese-language variety show that gained notoriety in the Vietnamese diasporic community in the mid-1990s and is still in production today. In the waiting area of my family’s nail salon, we always had PBN in the VHS player. This film is dedicated to children of immigrants, who grew up behind doors labeled “EMPLOYEES ONLY."

An imaginative telling of the story of a Vietnamese American mother-daughter duo who, in their attempt to heal the rift between them, reenact and satirize scenes from celebrated Vietnam War films while depicting a diasporic reality. Two inventive storylines complicate The MOTHERLOAD to levels of absurdity. Both of these glide in and out beneath the narrative backbone of Jessca and Kim’s personal story, and reflect the stunning disconnect between the Vietnamese diaspora and the world’s understanding of their presence.

An imaginative telling of the story of a Vietnamese American mother-daughter duo who, in their attempt to heal the rift between them, reenact and satirize scenes from celebrated Vietnam War films while depicting a diasporic reality. Two inventive storylines complicate The MOTHERLOAD to levels of absurdity. Both of these glide in and out beneath the narrative backbone of Jessca and Kim’s personal story, and reflect the stunning disconnect between the Vietnamese diaspora and the world’s understanding of their presence.