De film Far from Vietnam / Loin de Vietnam (1967) was, ondanks de vele bekende filmmakers, zoals Alain Resnais, Jean-Luc Godard, Chris Marker, Agnes Varda, Claude Lelouch, William Klein en Joris Ivens, tot voor kort nauwelijks beschikbaar, en dan alleen in illegale versies.
Sinds kort zijn er echter twee DVD boxen, gepubliceerd door Icarus/First Run in de VS en door ARTE in Frankrijk, waarin deze cruciale film tegen de Amerikaanse militaire inmenging in Vietnam, in gerestaureerde versie is opgenomen. Deze film is des te meer boeiend, omdat haar ontstaan teruggaat op het oorspronkelijke filmplan van Joris Ivens voor zijn film over de Zuid-Franse wind Pour le Mistral (1966). In zijn opzet wilde hij een veelluik, een filmmozaiek in verschillende filmstijlen, gemaakt door verschillende filmmakers. Daar kwam helemaal niets van terecht, maar hij was heel blij dat hij deze opzet alsnog kon gaan gebruiken, nadat het Wereld Vredesberaad hem uitnodigde een film over de Vietnamoorlog te maken. Uiteindelijk was het Chris Marker, die het collectief van filmmakers bij elkaar kreeg en de film realiseerde.
This compendium film is regarded the greatest legacy of the French New Wave. Joris Ivens and Marceline Loridan were not far away from Vietnam, on the contrary: they shot the only North-Vietnamese footage in this documentary.
A truly collaborative effort, the film brings together an array of stylistically disparate contributions, none individually credited, under a unified editorial vision. The elements span documentary footage shot in North and South Vietnam and at anti-war demonstrations in the United States; a fictional vignette and a monologue that dramatize the self-interrogation of European intellectuals; interviews with Fidel Castro and Anne Morrison, widow of Norman Morrison, the Quaker pacifist who burned himself alive in front of the Pentagon in 1965; an historical overview of the conflict; reflections from French journalist Michèle Ray; and a range of repurposed media material.
We see the Vietnamese patiently dismantling bombs and heading for bomb shelters (often holes in the street), juxtaposed with images of a parade in New York celebrating the war. Mayor John Lindsay says from the sidelines that “a parade is a parade,” a testament to bourgeois cynicism, and indifference toward his own degraded class in the face of an awful reality. A group of young executives chants “Bomb Hanoi!” with big grins on their faces. One official says the Lord’s Prayer in celebration of the police and military.
"An important film, a beautiful film, a moving film...the cinema at last has its `Guernica.`" —Richard Roud, The Guardian
"A stone-cold classic." —Michael Vazquez, The Huffington Post
"A landmark in the European cinema...A new kind of film-not an anthology-piece in which each director contributes a sketch, but a real fusion of each individual`s material into a collective statement." —Michael Kustow, The Times of London
"Rich with humanity and indignation...this is a film nobody should miss. It mirrors both the horror and the hope of our times." —Sanity magazine
"Manifests the will to produce a film that cuts through the sensationalized media reports on Vietnam--the misinformation--while simultaneously joining the growing protest against the war." —Nora M. Alter, Chris Marker (book)