Matt Mahan

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Season Greeting & An Update from VAHF

Dear Members & Friends,

It is time to say thank you from the bottom of my heart for your support all year long in VAHF's  mission of  collecting and preserving the Vietnamese American Immigration experience.

With your help, we have achieved many miles stones in 2014:
 
In regards to the documentary movie, we decided to divide it into 2 films.

1. Master Hoa's Requiem: A short 17 minute long film. This movie displays a boat person who escaped from Vietnam in 1981 with 74 other people. His boat was attacked by pirates leaving him the sole survivor. They raped the women and killed everyone on the boat including Master's Hoa's wife and his 2 children. Recently, Master Hoa journeyed through 4 countries in South East Asia to look for his wife's, children', and relatives' graves. Was he able to find the final resting place of his loved ones? Please see Master Hoa's Requiem when it is released. Below is the poster of the film. We have submitted the film to 14 film festivals and are waiting for the results.

2. The main film The Journey To Freedom of Vietnamese Americans which is 90 minutes length will be done in early 2015. This will be just in time for Black April 2015 to march 40 Saigon failed and the forming of the Vietnamese American Community. We will let you know when it will come out along with the screening schedule in different cities.

3. Beside all the hard work of making the films, the year of 2014 marked 10th year anniversary of serving the community building the lost history of Vietnamese Americans. VAHF's Members in New Orleans and VAHF's Board of Advisory Member, Rev. Michael Hoang Nam and the Father Nghiem Nguyen at Mary Queen of Vietnam Church held a 4 day celebration with activities and an unforgettable boat trip to the Gulf of Louisiana. It was a lot of fun and a good opportunity for members from California, Texas, New Orleans and Washington DC to share good times and plan activities for next year. Many thanks to anh chi:  John Hoa, Tonny Tran, Robert Phong Nguyen , Phong Tan Nguyen, Chau Lien Luong, and many others in New Orleans in supporting this remarkable event.

4. In May, from information of some members in the community, we sent a letter to request Publisher Greenwood to correct the chapter of The Vietnamese Immigrants in the book series titled: The Encyclopedia of the New Americans. This text book is to be used for High Schools and Colleges. It is available at more than 400 Libraries in US  and over a dozen countries around the world. We have found that 13 items were incorrect. Some mistakes were very disturbing such as " Nguyen Thai Hoc changed his name to Ho Chi Minh in 1943" The author, editor and publisher agreed to correct 10 items while the remaining 3 will remain unchanged due to these statements were quoted from an other book.

5. From our research, we also found a text book titled: The Vietnamese Americans with the same author and editor. This book has much of the same mistakes like  the chapter mentioned above and even more.
Such as the author wrote reason for the war in 1979 between Chinese  and Vietnamese was due to the conflict between the Chinese decent in Vietnam and the Vietnamese. However, the Chinese Communist attacked because Vietnam invaded Cambodia, a close ally of the Chinese. This textbook has been distributed to High Schools and Colleges and available at 961 Libraries across US and 38 different countries around the world. We have consulted with many Historians and authors and feel this book is beyond correction and needs to be withdrawn. We will work with the author, editor and publisher in the coming year to have these issues resolved. If resolution can not be achieved, we may need your support signing an online petition.

The outlook for 2015 will be much busier with all the remaining work as mentioned above as well as marketing the films which includes screening at all major cities in the US, working with distributors and TV networks to promote the films.

If you are interested in helping in any of these works, please let me know. We will be very grateful to have your help.

Last but not least, I would like to say thanks to the volunteers and sponsors who continue providing resources and financial support to VAHF and making the films become reality.

On behalf of VAHF,  Trien & I thank you from the bottom of our heart for your endless support and contribution. We cannot do all of this without you!

Have a Merry Christmas and Prosper New Year!


Best Regards,
Nancy Bui, VAHF
(512) 844-9417
www.vietnameseamerican.org
www.hoibaotonlichsuvanhoa.org