ABSTRACT
A central defining feature of the revolutionary cinema of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV)—or North Vietnam—is its highly expressive use of nature and rural landscape. The expressive natural and pastoral imagery, which shows strong affinities to contemporaneous Vietnamese poetry, not only evokes an intense lyricism but also functions as an affective site/sight for articulating an “authentic” Vietnamese identity for political mobilization. Through close analysis of a few representative films (including The Passerine Bird [Con chim vành khuyên, 1962] and Miss Tham’s Forest [Rừng O Thắm, 1967]), this chapter seeks to illuminate the essential role of landscape, both aesthetic and ideological, in Vietnamese revolutionary cinema.
