Mary Queen of Vietnam documentary debuts Feb. 9

By Peter Finney Jr.
Clarion Herald

Glen Pitre, a filmmaker and professor in residence at LSU, was teaching a filmmaking class in 2018 when a student, whose family roots are tied to Vietnam, showed his classmates a two-minute video he had shot of the annual Tet Festival at Mary Queen of Vietnam Parish in New Orleans.

“Wow, you should do something bigger on that,” Pitre suggested to the student, who didn’t take the hint.

The next semester, another Vietnamese student, Bao Ngo, who happened to be a parishioner of Mary Queen of Vietnam, got inspired by Pitre’s message, and it led to a major class project that now has evolved into a one-hour documentary, “Mary Queen of Vietnam,” to be aired Feb. 9 at 10 p.m. on WYES Channel 12 and other PBS stations across the state.

Pitre is the writer/producer of and Ngo, 23, is the director. The documentary comes at an opportune time because the annual Tet Festival has been canceled this year due to COVID-19 restrictions.

“For it to be shown during COVID time is a really great thing for the community so that people can see it and see what we do every year,” Ngo said. “This is a celebration that people come from out of town to attend. They come from everywhere.”

A historic migration
The documentary used the Tet Festival as the hook for a far deeper story of culture and community, Pitre said. The film captures public celebrations and private rituals and chronicles daily life for Vietnamese Catholics at work, school and church.

It also has an intergenerational twist, with interview subjects ranging from the older Vietnamese who came to the U.S. in 1975 after the fall of Saigon, a middle group who arrived in the U.S. as children and used their family support to achieve success in school and business, and a younger generation that is almost fully, “but not quite” Americanized, Pitre said.

“You hear and see all the headlines about asylum seekers and immigrants coming to the U.S., and here was a way to look at a community that’s a generation down the road,” Pitre said. “You see how they figure out what to keep from the old culture and what are the expectations of the people who came over and their children. You see how much it changes from one generation to the next, and, yet, in surprising ways.”

Traditions flourish
Pitre had heard of and seen the ritual Vietnamese dances that are a major part of Tet, but he was invited back for Good Friday, when he witnessed something he had never seen. A life-sized crucified Christ was carried by parishioners out of the church, and they processed up the steps to an elevated tomb, where they placed the crucifix for veneration.

“It sounds sacrilegious at first, but on Good Friday, they bury Jesus on a mattress of popcorn,” Pitre said. “The procession stretches off into the distance, but the last 30 or 40 feet, the people walk on their knees and kiss the feet.”

The popcorn, it turns out, is a substitute for a Vietnamese tradition that had Christ’s body resting on a bed of perfumed white flower petals, which are not available in the U.S. Tony Tran, parish coordinator, said in South Vietnam, Catholics have used popcorn as well. Children are allowed to take a handful of popcorn and eat it, but adults stick to their fast and do not eat it, Tran said.

Dueling languages
One of the aspects of the Vietnamese culture that resonated with Pitre was the mixture of languages.

“I grew up in Cutoff, where the adults all spoke French and the kids all spoke English among ourselves, and when you mixed, it was always a bit of a negotiation and you slipped in and out of one or the other,” Pitre said.

The centrality of family and respect for elders are attributes that continue to shine through Vietnamese culture.

“My sense is most of these families have a day of the week when everybody comes in and the multigenerational thing happens,” Pitre said. 

The documentary will have a with a simultaneous livestream Feb. 9 at www.wyes.org/live/. WWL-TV anchorman Thanh Truong narrates the film.

Although the Tet Fest will not be held this year, Mary Queen of Vietnam will have two Masses of Thanksgiving: Feb. 11 at 6 p.m. and Feb. 12 at 8 a.m.

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