Fifty After the Fall

Two-day Film Festival at the Davis Performing Arts Center

Georgetown University’s Theater and Performance Studies Program presents a film festival and symposium bringing together collective memory and personal histories of diasporic Vietnamese filmmakers and scholars. 

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This April 30, 2025 marks the fiftieth anniversary of The Fall of Saigon, an end to The American War in Vietnam. As the first televised war, Americans witnessed atrocities in the comfort of their living rooms, this conflict garnered criticism as well as outrage and protest. This anniversary approaches us at a time when similar sentiments are held, leading us to ask: What have we learned? Themes of conflict, displacement, and diaspora are evermore pertinent.

This two-day symposium, taking place at Georgetown’s Gonda Theater is programmed with these themes at the center. Along with invited guest speakers from the Vietnamese diaspora, we will be engaging with Georgetown students and community members in conversation. The event will include a programmed film festival, curated by Assistant Professor of Performing Arts Van Tran Nguyen with interlocution from filmmakers, writers, and impact producers, discussing their creative engagement with the program’s theme. Invited guests include Emmy award-winning producer and documentary filmmaker Elizabeth Ai, film director and editor Quyên Nguyễn-Lê, narrative filmmaker Richard Van, poet Terry Nguyen, and many more.

Films to be screened include:

Guest Speakers and Filmmakers

Elizabeth Ai (she/her/hers)

Elizabeth Ai is a Chinese Vietnamese American award-winning filmmaker, storyteller, and author. Her debut feature documentary, NEW WAVE, premiered in competition at the 2024 Tribeca Festival, earning a Special Jury Mention for Best New Documentary Director and critical acclaim from The New York Times, Vogue, IndieWire, Los Angeles Times, and San Francisco Chronicle. The New York Times selected it as a festival Critics’ Pick, calling it “a soft scream of a film” about ’80s Vietnamese diaspora culture, while Vogue praised its revelatory storytelling. 

She is the author of New Wave: Rebellion and Reinvention in the Vietnamese Diaspora and an Emmy winner and nominee for her branded content with ESPN and National Geographic. She created the original pilot for VICE/Munchies’ Bong Appétit, which was later picked up for a series on Viceland. Her producing credits include Dirty Hands, Saigon Electric, Ba, and A Woman’s Work: The NFL’s Cheerleader Problem.

Keva X. Bui (they/them/theirs)

Assistant Professor of Asian American Studies, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

Keva X. Bui is a scholar of Asian American studies, feminist science and technology studies, and critical militarization studies. Their book project, Disarming Empire, develops an anti-war and abolitionist critique of US Cold War racial science as it shapes the research, development, and deployment of weapons of mass destruction. Their writing has been published/is forthcoming in Journal of Asian American Studies, Amerasia, Verge: Studies in Global Asias, Frontiers, and The Sage Encyclopedia of Critical Refugee Studies. They are currently an Assistant Professor of Asian American Studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

Cathy Linh Che (she/her/hers)

Cathy Linh Che is a writer and multidisciplinary artist. She is the author of Becoming Ghost (Washington Square Press, 2025),  Split (Alice James Books) and co-author, with Kyle Lucia Wu, of the children’s book An Asian American A to Z: a Children’s Guide to Our History (Haymarket Books). She is working on a creative nonfiction manuscript on her parents’ experiences as refugees who played extras on Apocalypse Now. Her video installation Appocalips is an Open Call commission with The Shed NY, and her film We Were the Scenery won the Short Film Jury Award: Nonfiction at the Sundance Film Festival.

Andrew Fitzgerald (he/him)

Andrew Fitzgerald is a Los Angeles-based filmmaker. In 2017 he was named one of the “25 New Faces of Independent Film,” by Filmmaker Magazine after his short, I Know you from Somewhere, premiered at Sundance. His latest short The Family Circus premiered at Sundance 2023 followed by SXSW. Andrew has served as editor for cult classic series like Nathan Fielder’s THE REHEARSAL (HBO), John Wilson’s HOW TO WITH JOHN WILSON and Emmy winning series I THINK YOU SHOULD LEAVE WITH TIM ROBINSON. Most recently, Andrew directed and edited on Season three of I THINK YOU SHOULD LEAVE. 

Michael Kamel (he/him)

Michael Kamel is a Palestinian filmmaker and photographer whose work focuses primarily on the grey areas of identities and interpersonal relationships. 

In 2013, Michael started volunteering with DC-area film festivals and worked his way up to be Program Director of the DC Palestinian Film and Arts Festival (DCPFAF). Michael and his team champion the work of Palestinian artists and filmmakers in Palestine and in diaspora, showcasing the range and complexity of Palestinian identities and narratives.

Michael has worked on various film, TV and audio productions around New York and produced a number of independent shorts, including the documentary MY LIFE AS AN ARAB DRAG QUEEN for BuzzFeed. Most recently, he was the production manager for TESTED, the award-winning podcast from Bucket of Eels, CBC and NPR’s Embedded that explores the 100-year history of sex testing in women’s sports.

Terry Nguyen (she/hers)

Terry Nguyen is an essayist, critic, and poet from Garden Grove, California. She writes the newsletter Vague Blue on Substack, and has work in New York Magazine, The Nation, Brooklyn Rail, Los Angeles Review of Books, among other publications. She was formerly the senior writer at Dirt, a daily culture newsletter, and wrote about consumerism, technology, and pop culture for Vox. She is an incoming MFA poetry candidate at Columbia University.

This event is sponsored by Television, Internet & Video Association of DC INC.