Long Bien Bridge in 1925

Nhan Dan Online- Long Bien Bridge’s image was revitalised with a documentary series premiered in National Cinema Centre, Hanoi last Sunday.

The Cultural Development and Exchange Fund, the Embassy of Denmark in Hanoi and the Vietnam National Studio for Documentary and Scientific Film jointly arranged the presentation of three documentaries on the Long Bien Bridge, two made by Vietnamese and one by Danish director.

Two Vietnamese movies titled ‘Hanoi Has Long Bien Bridge’ and ‘Under the Bridge, on the Water Surface’ have been produced recently. While the first film produced by Vu Tru and Pham Cuong in 1992 shows the bridge as an important icon in Hanoi’s self-image, the second film, made by director Nguyen Sy Chung in 2004, featuring underprivileged lives of people living under the bridge.

Over 100 year old Long Bien Bridge now is still busy with many passengers

Shown along with two Vietnamese made documentaries is one 30 minute documentary produced by three Danish directors Steen Moller Rasmussen, Cai Ulrich v. Platen and Peter Schultz Jorgensen.

The Danish team has expanded on and renewed the classical tradition of documenting the flow of life around a central nexus of society. The documentary again lingers on the historical story of the bridge, but the major content is about the area’s street life, generated and continually created by the presence of the bridge. ‘The bridge spans the Red River and crosses both cultivated fields and the course of the river itself. During the rainy season, the massive amount of water converts the entire area into one large river. It is precisely because of these seasonal shifts that a unique culture has developed around the bridge, a place where urban and rural met as on one side of the bank still remains various agricultural scenes meanwhile on the opposite bank lies a new and rapidly changing area of urban development’, says Cai Ulrich v. Platen, visual artist and co-director of the film.

’Without commentary and musical embellishment, the pictures are allowed to talk for themselves, and they tell a fantastic story about the varied life that surrounds the gradually dilapidated bridge in the course of a month in spring in 2007’, says  Steen Moller Rasmussen, another member of the Danish team.

Long Bien Bridge was inaugurated in February 1902 and became at that time the largest bridge in Indochina and one of the four largest in the world. The two-and-a-half kilometre long bridge connects the Vietnamese capital, Hanoi with the port Hai Phong has witnessed different historical epochs of the country spanning 3 centuries. The Long Bien Bridge has continued to play a large role in Hanoi’s self-image and is often extolled in poetry and song.

DT