Ithaca College

Indochina: Traces of a Mother, an award-winning documentary film by Assistant Professor, Idrissou Mora-Kpai (MASS Dept.) will be screened at Cinemapolis, followed by discussion (free).

Sponsor: Park Center for Independent Media, Ithaca College
Organizers of event: IC Docs, Department of Media Arts, Sciences, and Studies, Cinemapolis and The Ithaca People’s Pop-Up Project.

The film screening is part of the exhibition and event series How Did We Get Here? that seeks to enrich the local dialogue on migration and displacement, both here and in the wider world.  It is a community response to trends in the national conversation about migration, as well as to the show how the light gets in at the Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell.

How Did We Get Here? is organized by the People’s Pop-Up Project, an ad hoc consortium of individuals and community groups. The local nonprofit Weave Community is hosting the effort. Partners include Ithaca City of Asylum, the Community Arts Partnership of Tompkins County, Open Doors English, WRFI Community Radio and Cinemapolis.

More information and a full schedule here.

Film synopsis:
Between 1946 and 1954, over 60,000 African soldiers were enlisted to fight the Viet Minh.  Pitted against one another by circumstances, these two colonized peoples came into contact and a number of African soldiers took Vietnamese women as wives.  Out of these unions, numerous mixed-race children were born. At the end of the war, the colonial army ordered that all the black children be repatriated to Africa, officially to protect them from the Viet Minh. While some children left with their mothers and fathers, others were simply taken away by their fathers, leaving their mothers behind.  Abandoned in orphanages, those that had neither mother nor father were put up for mass adoption by African officers, as was the case with Christophe.  Christophe long avoided facing the scars and identity complexes left by this abrupt separation from his mother and homeland. By encouraging him to undertake a journey into his own past, the film opens a little-known chapter of the Indochina war.  Visit: https://idrimora.com/projects/indochina-traces-of-a-mother/ 

Contact: Kati Lustyik, Ph.D. (Resident Fellow, CFE)