Affiliation:
1. the University of Southern California
Abstract
This chapter examines women’s mobility as presented in Vietnamese
revolutionary cinema in its heyday following the Gulf of Tonkin incident
(in 1964). Focusing on Ngọc Quỳnh’s On Top of the Wave, on Top of the
Wind, it argues that this film offers a timely reflection upon the reality
of fighting and the labour of the Vietnamese people in the American
War. Through the film’s spatial narrative and visuality of cultural and
physical geography, the filmmaker conflates nation and home, blurring
the separation of domestic and public spaces and creating a national/
familial space for both sexes. Yet while this narrative invokes patriotism
and mobilizes women’s participation in the national struggle, it also limits
women’s agency and subjectivity after the war.
Publisher
Amsterdam University Press