Summary

A film that reimagines the communal housing community of Hanoi, Vietnam.

Graduate Researcher – MFA Thesis Project

Kien Hoang

Project Description

I grew up in Hanoi, Vietnam. The city has witnessed, through its past pervaded with wars and destruction, many chapters of re-making and re-identifying the city by drawing from its heritage and adapting modernization. As a 90s kid, I grew up in a crucial time as the city began to transition from communism toward capitalism. While assimilating and adapting to new sociopolitical conditions, the people have shown a strong attachment to traditions in the way they organize their habitat by restructuring their surroundings to appear closer to the desired living state. This project reimagines, via the unique lens of computer animation, a specific part of the city, the communal housing community of Hanoi. As a spatial narrative, the film invites the audience to become a dweller in a communal apartment as it comes to life with movements and to witness the confrontation, negotiation and reconciliation between tradition and modernity. The project promotes thinking of community, the contradictions that exist in and out of established societies, the troubles of urban development, as well as my personal responsibility in preserving this heritage.