DOCUMENTARY FILM FEST CELEBRATES 10TH YEAR

Vietnamese award-winning documentary Remember: You Are Alive will open the 10th European – Vietnamese Documentary Film Festival on May 31 in Hà Nội and HCM City.

Directed by Đoàn Hồng Lê, the film won the Goldern Kite Award in 2018 from the Việt Nam Cinema Association for best documentary and best documentary director .

The 27-minute film tells the story of an anonymous rural girl who chooses the right attitude to face the tragedy in her life — cancer. It is a story about love, life and death.

Phạm Thị Huế from Quỳnh Hải Commune in the northern province of Thái Bình discovered she had liver cancer when she was just 16. Her doctor said she had about six months to live, but she managed to fight the disease and lived for another seven years.

During the time she was also awarded a college degree.

The film also focuses on Huế’s role in the play Memento Mori — an art community project. The play was performed by cancer patients.

Huế died on April 2 a few days before the film was awarded the Golden Kite Award this year.

The film will be screened at 7pm in Vietnamese with English subtitles at the National Documentary and Scientific Film Studio, 465 Hoàng Hoa Thám Street, Hà Nội, and Hoa Sen University, 8 Nguyễn Văn Tráng, District 1, HCM City.

The 10th Film Festival was a milestone on the long journey of co-operation between the European Union National Institute for Culture (EUNIC) and Việt Nam, according to Trịnh Quang Tùng, deputy director of the National Documentary and Scientific Film Studio.

“The festival has gained a foothold with audiences thanks to the high number of quality movies we screen,” Tùng said.

Screening at the opening will also be a Wallonie Brussels film entitled So Help Me God. It is the first feature film based on Strip Tease, a television show from Belgium. For three years, the directors followed judge Anne Gruwez in Brussels during criminal investigations, hearings and visits to crime scenes.

Directed by Jean Libon & Yves Hinant, the film won the Cesar Award and Magritte Award for best documentary.

The 99-minute screening will begin at 7.40pm with Vietnamese subtitles.

The festival will be held from May 31 to June 9 with participants from France, Germany, Britain, Wallonie Bruxelles, Israel, Czech Republic, Sweden, Spain, Denmark and Australia.

Nine other films by Việt Nam Television will also be screened.

Vietnamese filmmakers are trying to exploit the material-rich language of documentary cinema to truly reflect life and human beings.

Also within the framework of the festival, four films by Vietnamese independent filmmakers will be featured in a separate show on June 9

 

FIREWORKS FESTIVAL TO KICK OFF WITH A BANG

Diva Mỹ Tâm and singer Trọng Tấn will perform songs espousing the beauty of the Hàn River in Đà Nẵng and the Volga of Russia in the opening performance of the Đà Nẵng International Fireworks Festival on June 1.

The general director of the festival, Đỗ Thanh Hải, made the announcement at a press conference in Đà Nẵng yesterday, confirming the art performance will spark the one-month long festival with an amazing water space stage.

He said top Vietnamese singers such as Hồng Nhung, Tùng Dương, Uyên Linh, Phương Vy and Thảo Trang and European artists will also perform.

Hải said the fireworks festival will be promoted by art performances and street carnivals every weekend during the festival between June 2 and July 7.

The festival’s organisers will also host the final round of National Flashmob Contest at Đà Nẵng Sun World Wonders on June 29.

Meanwhile, the Sunshine Dance Festival will be held Sun World’s Bà Nà Hills from May 31 through September 30. More than 200 dancers and artists will offer two performances each day during the period.

The fireworks festival – the 10th edition since 2008 – will feature teams from Russia, Brazil, Belgium, Finland, England, China, Italy and Việt Nam lighting up the Hàn River from June 1 to July 7.

This year’s event, titled ‘Stories by the Rivers’, will see teams describing the beauty and culture of typical rivers in their countries during the month-long festival.

Việt Nam and Russia will perform during the curtain-raiser on June 1, while Brazil and Belgium will take the stage on June 8.

Three-time champions Italy and Finland will play the third night on June 15, while England and China will perform on June 22.

The top two teams will be selected for the final on July 6.

Last year, Italy’s Martarello clinched the title for the third time after winning in 2011 and 2012.

According to the organisers, the fireworks festival drew more than 1.5 million tourists last year.

 

SAIGON AMONG TOP 50 CITIES IN THE WORLD FOR COWORKING GROWTH

A recent report ranks Ho Chi Minh City 41st among world’s 50 fastest growing coworking markets in the world.

Every 47.5 days, a new coworking space opens in Vietnam’s southern metropolis, according to the 2019 Global Coworking Growth Study recently published by CoworkingResources, a global information hub for modern workspaces.

The report is based on research that tracked all coworking space openings for 10 months, from June 2018 to April 2019. It ranks major cities around the world based on the number of days between new space openings.

London topped the list, with a coworking space springing up in the U.K. capital every five days, followed by New York (7.5 days), Toronto in Canada (13 days), Austin (15 days) and Denver (16.8 days), both in the U.S.

The top 10 was dominated by seven American cities, reflecting the wide popularity of the coworking space concept in almost every city in the U.S.

The report says Vietnam came in 31st among top 50 global economies with the highest growth in per capita coworking space numbers.

Luxembourg, Singapore and Ireland were the top three countries, with the first chalking up 8.5 new spaces annually for every 1,000,000 inhabitants, almost double the following two.

Vietnam has seen the coworking space market expand in recent years. Major local operators like Toong, UP, Circo and Dreamplex are all expanding at an accelerated rate, and the number of smaller operators with just one venue is also increasing.

As of April last year, there were 23 coworking operators in Vietnam managing a total of 34 spaces, according to real estate consultants CBRE.

Nguyen Hong Hai, CEO of office rental service Pax Sky, said coworking spaces are now popular because the supply of office space in HCMC’s central districts fails to meet demand of the rising number of entrepreneurs choosing to base themselves in the city.

Hai told VnExpress that grade A office space in the city costs $50-60 per square meter plus taxes a month, and grade B office space, $22-30.

But occupancy rates of over 95 percent mean customers have to wait for a long time to find a good place, he said.

There is still a lot of untapped potential in the coworking industry in HCMC because of its very vibrant entrepreneurship scene, he added.

HANOI, HCM CITY POISED TO HOST EUROPEAN-VIETNAMESE DOCUMENTARY FESTIVAL

The event is to be hosted by the Vietnam National Documentary and Scientific Film Studio alongside the European Union National Institutes for Culture.

The festival will see films from 10 European countries shown, including from Austria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Israel, Spain, Switzerland, the UK and Belgium, in addition to Vietnamese works.

Audiences will have the chance to learn more about a wide variety of different countries, people, and cultures through featured-documentary films.

The event is to showcase a number of films which have won prizes at prestigious international film festivals, and is expected to be a great success that brings excitement to watching audiences.

POPULISTS LOOKING TO CAUSE UPSETS AS EU ELECTIONS BEGIN

Populists are hoping to cause upsets across the EU as the European Parliament elections get under way today in polls that could challenge the Brussels consensus.

Britain and the Netherlands kick off four days of voting across the continent in a battle for the future of the European integration project.

More than 400 million voters across 28 nations are eligible to elect 751 MEPs — Britain included.

Having voted to leave the EU in a seismic referendum in 2016, Britain was originally meant to depart on March 29 and therefore not take part in these elections.

But its MPs have not been able to agree on a divorce deal and Britain now finds itself in the absurd situation of electing lawmakers to an institution it is planning to leave.

The Brexit Party, formed only this year by eurosceptic figurehead Nigel Farage, is leading the latest British opinion polls by a solid margin.

“We are attempting a peaceful political revolution in this country,” Farage told the party’s final rally on Tuesday.

“The establishment: they’re not frightened — they’re absolutely terrified!” Farage said of his party’s rise.

Opposed to closer EU integration 

In the Netherlands, populist Thierry Baudet, a classics-quoting climate sceptic, is on course to beat Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s Liberals.

Once best known for naked Instagram selfies and controversial comments about women, Baudet, 36, stunned Europe in March when his Forum for Democracy became the biggest party in the Dutch senate.

Around the continent, national leaders are scrambling to mobilise their supporters to resist the populist surge.

These are the ninth European parliament elections since they began in 1979 and voter turnout has dropped each time, hitting 43 percent in 2014.

European governments fear a good showing for eurosceptics will disrupt Brussels decision-making.

Opinion polls predict a significant advance for nationalist and populist forces opposed to closer EU integration and threatening mainstream reform efforts.

‘Everything has changed’ 

Matteo Salvini of Italy’s anti-immigrant League and Marine Le Pen of France’s far-right National Rally (RN) want their Europe of Nations and Freedom (ENF) group to become the third largest in Brussels.

Le Pen wants to strike a blow to Emmanuel Macron’s faltering French presidency by overtaking his centrist, pro-European party Republic on the Move.

Polls give the RN party a slight edge.

“Everything has changed,” she said.

“Before we were on our own on the European scene… we didn’t have any allies. But in the space of a few months, a whole range of political forces have risen up in spectacular fashion,” she said.

And in Britain, the rise of Farage is adding to the pressure for Prime Minister Theresa May to announce her resignation in the days to come over her failure to deliver Brexit on time.

The British leader’s woes were made worse on Wednesday when her representative in parliament Andrea Leadsom quit, putting May’s government under further strain.

However, the strong showing by eurosceptics is not expected to sweep the whole bloc, with voters from Spain to Ireland and the former Soviet Baltic states showing solid backing for the EU.

The latest Eurobarometer survey commissioned by the European Parliament found 61 percent of respondents calling their country’s EU membership a good thing – the highest level since the early 1990s.

The polls open at 0530 GMT in the Netherlands and 0600 GMT in Britain.

The polls will open on Friday in the Czech Republic and Ireland, and on Saturday in Latvia, Malta and Slovakia.

But most countries will be voting on Sunday, with the results expected overnight into Monday.

Centre-right set to win

Nine different projections this month predict that the EPP, the main centre-right bloc in the assembly, will come out with the most seats ahead of the main centre-left PES bloc and then the ALDE liberals.

Former Luxembourg prime minister Jean-Claude Juncker is stepping down after five years as president of the European Commission.

EPP leader Manfred Weber is their candidate to replace him, while the PES is putting up former Dutch foreign minister Frans Timmermans.

The hunt will also be on for someone to replace former Polish premier Donald Tusk as chairman of the EU leaders’ council.

Other prime jobs up for grabs will be those held by a trio of Italians: High Representative for foreign relations, Federica Mogherini, Mario Draghi at the European Central Bank and European Parliament speaker Antonio Tajani.

VNS