The Year of the Dragon, symbol of growth, creativity and renewal, was a fruitful one for the Vietnamese Cultural Center in terms of our achievements, projects and ideas.
The Vietnamese Cultural Weeks continue to reflect the evolution of our organization and its aspirations. In 2024, an important step was taken towards young people with an initiative centered on the K-Pop musical trend, attracting to the Centre a new generation eager to highlight an aspect of Asian culture on a resolutely contemporary note.
At the same time, the evening with Flora Lê forged a precious link with the mixed-race second generation born here, offering them stories that resonate with their hybrid identity.
Finally, the participation of a Montreal artist and writer of Cambodian origin marks a significant turning point in our mission to bring communities together. These encounters illustrate a promising opening, as the Vietnamese, Cambodian and Laotian communities, despite their geographical and cultural proximity, have often cohabited in a certain solitude, sometimes fed by prejudices linked to a lack of historical knowledge.
This approach, which is still fragile, is essential if we are to forge lasting links between our histories, our generations and our cultures.
The documentary “Beyond Lotus” that we presented last spring is much more than a one-off project. The film is the result of in-depth reflection at the Centre. Our aim is to place the notion of History with a capital H at the heart of the story, giving priority to the words of historians and experts in order to offer a rigorous, contextualized analysis of events. This choice stems from our desire to distance ourselves from individual accounts, often marked by selective memory, which although precious, are not sufficient to represent the history of a country in all its complexity. The documentary invites the public to discover enlightening perspectives that go beyond eyewitness accounts to embrace a collective, nuanced understanding of our past.
The coming Year of the Serpent is symbolized by wisdom, discernment, intuition and independence.
2025 will mark the 50th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War and the start of a tragic exodus lasting more than a decade. This chapter of history will be commemorated by the majority of Vietnamese organizations.
After careful consideration, we have decided that Cultural Weeks 2025 will be an opportunity to show that the Vietnamese community has much more to offer and tell than the story of the Boat People. Vietnam, rich in cultural heritage, had allowed itself to vibrate to the rhythms of elsewhere, from Europe to the Americas, long before and long after the war. These years, often reduced to tragedy and migration, were also a period of aspiration and connection with the world, as we emerged from the feudal era. We want to move beyond victimization, highlighting resilience and our ability to rebuild. This resilience is a powerful tool for surviving, moving forward, dreaming and reconnecting with the world. For too long, Vietnamese history and culture have been locked in narratives of war, exodus and exile. It’s time to free ourselves from fixed postures, to share a vibrant and profound Vietnam, and to offer younger generations the desire to discover a cultural heritage that transcends these ordeals.”
The seventh Vietnamese Cultural Weeks will be bold and imaginative, as through the magic of art and technology, spectators will experience these moments both in the past and the present, in Quebec and in Vietnam.
But first, we’ll present the documentary A as Asian, which focuses on negative stereotypes, anti-Asian acts and xenophobia, not to denounce them but to encourage victims to adopt pro-active attitudes and measures to change their situation from passive, inaudible victim to actor of change.
Nguyen Kim Phuong,
Founder and President