Idrissou Mora-Kpai is right here with us in Charleston, he is the spouse of International Studies professor Jeanette Jouilli. African Studies showed this film last year as part of the Global Awareness Forum and it got a very large turnout.
Third World Newsreel Aquires Idrissou Mora-Kpai’s
“Indochina: Traces of a Mother”
Film Documents Little-Known Chapter in African, Vietnamese and French History
“INDOCHINA: TRACES OF A MOTHER gives space for the grown Afro-Vietnamese orphans to tell their stories, but also to explore the contradictions of the colonial order.”
Black Film Center/Archive Blog
(New York) TWN is proud to announce the educational release of INDOCHINA: TRACES OF A MOTHER by Beninese filmmaker Idrissou Mora-Kpai. This film documents a little-known chapter in African, Asian and French colonial history and the personal story of Christophe, a Beninese-Vietnamese orphan that returns to Vietnam to look for his long-lost mother.
Between 1946 and 1954, more than 60,000 African soldiers were enlisted by France to fight the Viet Minh during the First Indochina War. Pitted against one another by circumstances, African and Vietnamese fighters came into contact, and a number of African soldiers married Vietnamese women. Out of these unions, numerous mixed-race children were born.
At the end of the war, the French colonial army gave orders to bring all Afro-Vietnamese children to Africa. While some children left with their mothers and fathers, others were simply taken away by their fathers, leaving their mothers behind. Children that had neither mother nor father were abandoned in orphanages and put up for mass adoption by African officers.
Director Idrissou MORA-KPAI is an independent documentary filmmaker and producer who graduated from Konrad Wolf University of Film and Television Art in Potsdam-Babelsberg, Germany. Mora-Kpai’s socially and politically engaged documentary films have been screened throughout the world and received numerous international prizes and awards. From 2011 to 2012, Mora-Kpai was an Artist-in-Residence at the Institute for Comparative Modernities at Cornell University and from 2012-2013 he was a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Art of the Moving Image program at Duke University. In 2013, Mora-Kpai received the prestigious Prince Claus Award for outstanding achievements in the field of culture and development.
Winner of the Best Documentary Award at the Algiers International Film Festival, INDOCHINA: TRACES OF A MOTHER is available from Third World Newsreel for educational purchase on DVD and Digital File combo. For more information about this film, please contact Third World Newsreel.
“Heartbreaking… These men, oppressed by the French, were brought to Vietnam to fight a war which they had no part of, and which wasn’t theirs to begin with.” Shadow and Act Blog
“INDOCHINA’s exploration of heretofore uncharted ground in French, African, and Vietnamese history and its insight into the unexpected psychological impacts of colonial warfare illuminate the present.” Ian Merkel, Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art
Awards: Third Prize, Documentary Film, FESPACO, Burkina Faso Best Documentary, Algiers International Film Festival