Thursday, April 4, 2013

A Village Called Versailles


After watching this movie about the effects of Katrina on the Vietnamese-American community of New Orleans I decided to do some research about the producers and give my own reflection about it. The movie was filmed my S. Leo Chiang in 2009. It uses a collection of videos showing the catastrophe that Katrina left behind, the shelters where refugees would go to during the hurricane, and most importantly it gave exclusive interviews with the main people that helped the Vietnamese community get back up on its feet. The film itself got many awards (like the ones seen below)
I had many different feelings as I watched this movie. Firsty, however, I must admit I did not even know there was such a large Vietnamese community in New Orleans! The documentary taught me that most came from very poor backgrounds and it was really difficult for them to adjust to the United States environment. Then the documentary showed how they suffered during the Hurricane and how it forced them to spread around the map in search for shelter and to escape the storm. Once it had all passed the people would come back thanks to the help of Rev. Vien Nguyen and others. Finally, it showed the struggles they had to face after the government decided to dump the debris into land that would (in the long run) contaminate the water that the Vientamese people used. 
I enjoyed the documentary so much and recomend it to those who, like me, are ignorant about the events before, during and after Katrina. For more information visit this website.

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