"Finding Phong" (Tim Phong): A Review & Interview with Phong

For a Subversity Show Online bilingual (Vietnamese/English) interview with Phong, click here.  Thanks to Thuy-Van Nguyen for interpreting! 

Garnering the Community Spotlight Award at the 2016 Vietnamese Film Festival held in Orange, California, “Finding Phong” (Tim Phong) is an exquisitely beautiful and revealing 2015 film about a young Vietnamese man’s journey to become a young woman. 

Scene from "Finding Phong":  Mother (in background) with Phong

 Although the film lists two veteran indie filmmakers Tran Phuong Thao and Swann Dubus as co-directors, credit nonetheless also belongs to the subject of this documentary, Le Anh Phong.  Phong manages capture with small video cameras her own journey (while trapped in the body of a male), as she filmed herself talking to her mother who is far away back in their rural home in Quang Ngai province in Central Vietnam.  

Selfie scene from "Finding Phong"

Phong with Subversity Show host

Self-identifying as a girl in her childhood, the star of the film also manages to capture what must be an ethnographer’s dream footage, as sister, brother and friends talk explicitly about heterosexual sex including ejaculation and oral and penetrative sex.  In addition to her mother, in her 70s, who wonders why she is fated to have such a son (she had been happy the boy was born), the bearded father (in his eighties) is shown saying that it doesn’t matter boy or girl as long as there is support for the Revolution!

 

The film has been expertly and carefully edited out of 250 hours of footage and ends right after Phong manages to complete the physical transition at a Thai clinic.  It was totally unscripted, and could not have been, given the gems of humanity that remain in the film after its length was trimmed. 

Kudos to the producers Gerry Herman and Nicole Pham who have partnered with Phong to see this amazing film reach the festival audience worldwide.  It won France’s Nanook GrandPrix at the 34th Festival International Jean Rouch last fall, and furthermore a DVD of the film has been added to every French school library in an attempt at helping overcome discrimination against the transgendered.  

Phong at VFF

Most significantly, Phong tells me in our brief Subversity Show Online interview, Phong’s mother testified before state legislators, and Phong’s story of her gender transition no doubt was instrumental in the passage of Asia’s first law permitting transgendered to register in their chosen gender, when Vietnam’s legislature passed such legislation last November.  The law comes into effect in 2017 after 282 legislators voted in favor of it, out of 366.  Unlike Phong, who had to travel to Thailand for her operation, future Vietnamese transsexuals will be more likely to find receptive clinics within Vietnam.  Phong, who had moved to Hanoi to go to university and discovered she was not alone as a transgendered, now works for the state Puppet Theater there, painting the figurines that are used in Vietnamese cultural productions.  – Daniel C. Tsang.

Trannie Andy Quach Afraid to Meet Real Trans?

Westminster Councilman Andy Quách grins after DUI last year in mugshot.

"Trannie" Andy Quách may yet get to meet a real transgendered Vietnamese American -- or more -- this Saturday, the eve of Lunar New Year or Tet. The up and down (DUI) politician carefully mentored by state legislator Van Tran (hence a "Trannie") is all agitated about the prospect of lesbian, gay, bisexual -- and transgendered -- members of his Vietnamese American community marching in the annual Tet festival he's helping organize this year! But as a city official (the march is organized by Westminster where he sits on its city council), he can't very well say no to a group that duly paid the city's $100 fee to be able to march.

So earlier this week he sends out a press release, in Vietnamese, to say, sorry folks, while he is personally against these folks marching, he can't do anything about it (he cannot discriminate!) and please celebrate the advent of the Year of the Tiger with him.

But not everyone is pleased he is taking the legalistic way out and not expressing his homophobia more strongly. Stirred by news that sexual minorities plan to march, religious opposition to the gay participation has manifested itself, with Pastor Trần Thanh Vân of Hội Ðồng Liên Tôn (Interfaith Council) calling for a religious boycott of the Tet parade, according to Nguoi Viet. Its editor, Hao-Nhien Vu, echoes the Vietnamese reportage in his sardonic English-language Bolsavik blog.

Following KUCI's Subversity radio program this past Monday on the upcoming march, the Orange County Register has also jumped on the story, but states incorrectly that it is the first time gay Vietnamese would have marched in Orange County. In fact, they marched along Campus Drive in Irvine a few years back, when OC Pride Festival was held at UC Irvine.

Andy Quách's move to stand on legalities is laudable but may not win him kudos from the more conservative religious right elements of his community. The first Vietnamese American elected to public office (also to city council in Westminster), Tony Lam suffered a huge backlash from anti-communist elements in Little Saigon when he, on the advice of the city attorney, did not attend rallies protesting the display of Uncle Ho's photo and the flag of Vietnam during the HiTek protests a decade or more earlier, even though OC District Attorney Anthony Rackauckas himself showed up in a clearly partisan (Republican) move to rally the anti-commie crowd, as I wrote about in the OC Weekly in 1999. Andy Quách's religiously fundamentalist supporters may be just as unforgiving.