TR006 - Fire - 12/2017

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updated: 2022-03-02

I didn’t save anything for this project apart from this log.

Like the introduction from the previous log, this is the documentary I thought the content was long and interesting enough for a television broadcast.

The idea was I can make a film about kids living on the street to help raise attention for the poor lives that are living in poverty right in the middle of a wealthy town.

I asked a friend Nghĩa (Bờ-Lu) to participate in this project as the cameraman. Bờ-Lu at the time had experience with the Assistant Director role; and wanted to do something different than the advertising projects that he normally got.

We found a family with father as a bike taxi rider, older brother as a security force for the government (not quite police) and our main character was a fire dancer on the night street of Sài Gòn. The whole family doesn’t have a stable home but sleep under a temporary roof at a corner of a street. We shot for three days and I realised that the camera has a very negative effect to these poor lives. They started to act for the camera to show how poor they were in hope that they would get a hefty paid.

This is when I met the border between truth and illusion of this art called filmmaking. Accidentally, I pushed a lie out of real lives. I decided to stopped the project. To this day I am still a little hesistant when someone ask to do any sort of documentary film.

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Credits

published: never
/Director/
/Camerawork/

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