How a film about Vietnamese New Wavers in SoCal became a journey of healing

Whether it’s TV, film or books, the Vietnam War and its aftermath are often told through the eyes of American GI’s.

But nearly 50 years after the fall of Saigon, some Vietnamese American storytellers are changing up the narrative.

“What was I going to do — rehash the Vietnam War?" said filmmaker Elizabeth Ai. "That wasn't in my history at all.”

Instead, in her new documentary “New Wave,” Ai delves into the 80’s music that teenage Vietnamese refugees embraced as they searched for belonging in their new country.

The Vietnamese New Wave movement saw teens and young adults adopting mohawks and teasing their bangs with Aqua Net.

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Courtesy of New Wave

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“New Wave,” playing at the Laemmle in Glendale through Thursday, turns out to be more than a music documentary. It’s also a meditation on family, trauma and healing.

The years-long making of the documentary – and a companion book called “New Wave: Rebellion and Invention in the Vietnamese Diaspora” set Ai on a personal journey. More than mid-way through, she found herself moving from behind the camera to being on camera.

“It was a VH1 Behind the Music documentary that turned into something else,” Ai said.

A Secret World

Six years ago, Ai was looking for a project to do during maternity leave — she’s a self-described workaholic — and knew she wanted to make a film about the Vietnamese American community. She dug through old family photos, some in photo albums, others stored in suitcases.

The photos that popped out to AI were of her uncles and aunts who fled with their family to the U.S. as children before she was born. They came of age in the 80s, wearing heavy eyeliner and teased their hair mile-high.

Elizabeth Ai was raised by young relatives like her aunt, Myra.

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Courtesy of Elizabeth Ai

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They listened to U.K. New Wave bands like New Order and Depeche Mode. But what they really loved was the synth-pop coming from Italy and Germany, known as Eurodisco, exemplified by acts such as Modern Talking, C.C. Catch and Bad Boy Blues.

“It was the deep cuts,” Ai said. “They felt like this was their own little secret world.”

The music inspired a Vietnamese New Wave movement, centered in Little Saigon.

Singers would put their own spin on European hits when they went on Vietnamese-language entertainment shows produced in Little Saigon, the most famous being Paris By Night.

Lynda Trang Dai was one of the top stars of the Vietnamese New Wave movement.

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Courtesy of Nancy Nguyen

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And the biggest star was Lynda Trang Dai, who dressed in bodysuits and bustiers reminiscent of the Material Girl.

“Lynda is the Vietnamese Madonna, and she represented so much to this community through being the artist that covered all the top hits,” Ai said.

Looking in the mirror

Dai’s chirpy cover of C.C. Catch's “Jump in My Car” was part of the soundtrack to Ai’s childhood in the San Gabriel Valley, where her teenage aunts and uncles were her de facto parents.

Ai’s dad was out of the picture. Her mom was never home because she was busy moving around Southern California, opening nail salons — more than a dozen by Ai’s count.

“She would help other relatives start a salon, and then be like, ‘Okay, you take it over,’” Ai said. “She would get it to a certain place where there was clientele, and she would move on and open another one.”

Her mother’s absence left Ai feeling abandoned. The distance between them stretched into adulthood. They’d go for years without talking or seeing each other.

In the course of making "New Wave," Elizabeth Ai crowdsourced photos of New Wavers from around the world.

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Thái Tài

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“I try not to think about like what it would have been like to have had a mom, because those are just kind of infinite possibilities,” Ai said.

But as Ai suppressed those feelings, she kept hearing about similar experiences from the New Wavers she interviewed for the film. Many had gravitated to the music scene because they were looking for a second family.

“They didn’t have parents who were present in their lives,” Ai said. “Either they were separated or they would be present, but they would be working around the clock and trying to figure out how to learn English at night.”

Ai began to see her family in her subjects. There were so many parallels between her mom and Dai, the Vietnamese Madonna. Dai too was the breadwinner for her family. To keep performing, she would often leave her young son in the care of relatives.

“All of a sudden, unraveling their stories led me to my own,” Ai said.

That’s when Ai, at the gentle prodding of her producing team, turned the camera on herself.

Reconciliation

The film shows Ai reaching out to her mother, whom she hadn’t seen for a decade by that point.

It was scary to share anything about her life, “let alone air my family's dirty laundry.'"

"What I've been told my whole life is 'You don't talk about this,'" Ai said. "Everything is about saving face.”

Filmmaker Elizabeth Ai made "New Wave" over six years.

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Yudi Echevarria

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But it was freeing to acknowledge the family dysfunction — and to work through it. The film shows Ai and her mom reuniting far from Southern California — in Jackson Hole, Wyoming where her mother had moved.

Since the film premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival this summer, Ai’s not only heard from New Wavers, but others grappling with family trauma.

“People [are] telling me 'I am estranged from my sister',” Ai said. “Some guy told me, ‘Oh, now I know why my mom doesn't talk to her sister. Auntie is out of our lives.’”

Ai started out thinking she was making the film for her community and her daughter, now five. While that's true, the film is also for her.

“I got to know my mom, and it's healing for me,” Ai said. “I made something and I learned so much about myself that I never would have had I not done it.”