All language subtitles for Loin Du Vietnam

On one side the
United States of America,

the largest military
industrial power of all time.

Since 1965, start
of the escalation,

the Americans have thrown over a
million tons of bombs on North Vietnam,

more than those launched on
Germany during all of World War II.

A country whose 200 million people
spend more on wrapping paper

than 500 million Indians
spend on food

has many resources to
offer its army.

Every morning in the Gulf of Tonkin

the aircraft carriers of the
7th Fleet are filled with bombs.

1,000 tons a day.

It's a war of the rich.

On the other side,
a war of the poor.

That of 17 million
North Vietnamese

and their compatriots in the South
who fight for independence.

They are the poorest,
but not the weakest.

They are the least in number,
but not the most alone.

Because if the daily war
puts Vietnam in a solitude

which Che Guevara compares to
gladiators in the arena,

much of the Third World has
become in solidarity with Vietnam

and Vietnam is where the fundamental
question of our time arises:

the right of the poor to create,
for progress,

a society based on something
besides the interests of the rich.

In Cuba, Fidel Castro proclaimed
1967 the year of Vietnam.

He knows whereof he speaks.

And because the USA didn't manage
to stop the Cuban revolution

in 1961 at the Bay of Pigs,

they will not allow the emergence
of a revolutionary movement anywhere.

From here in Santo Domingo, the anti-
guerrilla struggle in Latin America

and the enormous war effort
in Vietnam.

America wants to show the world that
revolutionary struggle is a dead end.

It chose Vietnam to prove a point.

Perhaps it was a bad choice.

and many other technicians, assistants
and friends made this film in 1967

to affirm solidarity with the Vietnamese
people struggling against aggression.

They are called guavas.

They are cluster bombs.

The unexploded ones are
collected and defused.

A mother bomb scatters 300
of them in a kilometer radius

and each in turn flings 600
steel balls at human height.

These balls produce no effect
on cement and metal.

Their logical destination
is human skin.

Hanoi is less than an hour's flight
from the 7th Fleet's aircraft carriers.

The bombings have created
a new craft in the city:

the fabrication
of individual shelters.

Cement tubes fitted with covers
cast in wooden molds,

subjected to a whole series
of consolidation operations

then buried along the roads to hold
one or two people during air raids.

Poor materials against rich materials,
poor technique against rich technique,

one always finds
the same balance of power

and, on the American side,
the same ignorance of the adversary.

American society has a principle:
the poorest is always the least equipped.

Poverty can be the basis of moral
strength superior to the rich aggressor

and America doesn't understand this.

It was decided to bomb Vietnam
because at the American command

no one imagined that a small country
could resist material destruction.

It was another demonstration,
and it was twofold.

True, the Americans demonstrated
they could, being strongest militarily,

penetrate airspace
without declaration of war

and bomb a sovereign nation
like Switzerland or England,

attracting only
diplomatic reprimand.

But on the essential point,

to weaken North Vietnam's morale and
dictate conditions of an American peace,

the experiment failed.

Joris Ivens wrote from Hanoi
shooting these scenes:

"By living with them,
one becomes calm like them.

And certain of victory."

All the travelers,
even the American journalists,

testify to this calm, this certainty.

The Vietnamese do not bend.

They suffer a daily crime,
but it's a useless crime.

Vietnamese newsreels
Bombing of Hanoi, Dec. 13 & 14, 1966

In April of 1967, Vice President
Humphrey goes to get an idea of Europe

and the view of Europeans
on American policy.

They declare themselves
very satisfied.

Humphrey go home!

Humphrey assassin!

Johnson weeps

In North Vietnam,
in a bombed region,

the loudspeaker announces
a popular theater performance

also giving instructions
in case of alarm.

The characters with traditional
costumes represent President Johnson

and a counselor
who could be MacNamara.

In case you hadn't realized,
the woman is portraying Johnson.

Oh, my F4H aircraft!

We call you Phantom

and you become ghosts.

And you, powerful Thunderchief!

God of lightning,
you were yourself struck.

Oh Crusader, oh flying sabers!
Oh Skyraider, runners of the sky!

You are returned to heaven.

Oh US Air Force,
if the gods like you

find the way back to America!

So weeps our poor Johnson,

and we say to him:

"Pirates always receive

their deserved punishment.

Full of anger, you still bite

like a blinded player
who persists.

If you still have any wisdom,

go back home!

Return to your home!"

And now the latest news
from Radio Luxembourg

presented by Alain Quintrie.

"We must make life hard
for the North Vietnamese.

Too bad for civilian casualties,"
is what you said...

I'm looking for a book
by Herman Kahn.

Claude Ridder, a writer
appointed by a film producer

to write an analysis of Herman
Kahn's book "On Escalation".

He is torn and confesses,
he is an imaginary character

and though no one risks
seeing themselves in him,

we felt it necessary
to listen for a moment,

contradictory, pathetic
and honest in its way,

to the voice of bad conscience,
that is to say, bad faith.

You really look like an owl.

You know something?

It's the first war in history
that everyone can see live.

No one has ever seen a war
so close, as it happens.

No one can say "if I'd known."
Now they know and see.

"This war is an obscenity,"
not only the Pope says so,

but also Desgraupes, Zitrone.
Everyone knows and sees.

The bombs make real deaths
and the bullets real holes.

Poor lost orphans in
a world that bewilders them!

And then what? Pity? Fear?

But this takes place
on a piece of furniture.

Not in Vietnam, not in the head, not
on the street, on a piece of furniture.

We can't be afraid of a
piece of furniture.

We have the war in Vietnam
in our living room

like grandfather
has the map of a battle.

You know what this
kind of information brings?

Vietnam again!

During the war in the Pacific
there was a shocking image:

a Japanese burnt by a flamethrower
extending his hand. In Manila.

A true symbol, all the horrors of war.
After, we couldn't help but see it.

The editors knew him so well
they nicknamed him Gustave.

He served all the causes,
was in all the documentaries.

He represented Japanese imperialism
the victim of its folly,

the Asian peoples
the victim of white imperialism,

the eternal man
the victim of eternal war.

He's nude and in flames
and when he appears we say:

"Gustave again!"

They show massacres
to try and cure people of war,

but they show them continually!

We end up confusing them,
always the same scene for 20 years

and it doesn't stop a thing!

It's easy to start a war,
you don't know how easy.

It only takes a little
attention at the beginning.

Just mobilize the young until the first
death, everything follows from that.

No more fighting for ideas,
there's a friend to avenge.

Why don't you just say
those hogs killed him, right?

No more shifting sands, now it's serious.
It's not war anymore, it's revenge.

10 million brothers armed to avenge
brothers killed, sisters raped.

It's not politics,

it's revenge, it's a crime of
passion, it's assured absolution.

Take you or me.

Imagine you're
in danger somewhere

and risk being hurt or dying.

There's someone who knows
where you are and could say,

but for some reason he doesn't
want to and keeps his mouth shut.

He has your life, your freedom
locked between his jaws,

closed in his thick head,

and I'm there before him,
with all my respect for people

and all my principles,

and I know that beating
on his thick head

could force out
your liberty or your life.

However odious torture is,
and I've signed petitions against it,

I know doing this evil could stop
the evil being done to you.

Well?

What do I do?

Can you tell me what to do?

I've never found myself
in a similar situation.

The opposite yes,

and I followed my principles.

But it was luck, nothing more.

I judge others
in the name of luck.

I became a partisan
with no problem.

The Germans were monsters,
no visceral problems.

I still feel a kind of animal panic
when I hear German spoken.

Then I remember the last days

when suddenly,
near a small village,

we ran into an
American armored division.

The Jeeps, the heavy artillery,

the tanks, chewing gum, 1944.

We were rather happy
to see them arrive.

After all we had no ammunition,
I owe the Americans my life.

I will always love them.

Until the end of time I'll continue to
kill Germans and love Americans.

Except the Americans are the
Germans of the Vietnamese.

Everything gets complicated.

And even if you could
stop a war somewhere,

it's like a permanent fire:
it bursts out from somewhere,

millions of firefighters
rush to extinguish it,

most of them die,

the fire goes out, no time for a
breath and it starts up elsewhere.

Again millions of firefighters rush,
die, put out the fire, and so on.

I swore to no longer
support the firefighters.

I didn't think you could
support the fire.

But what fire?

We must choose.

Vietnam is perfect,
everyone is for Vietnam.

I know a place where they
give "Vietnam meals":

for 1000 francs you get a bowl of rice,
the proceeds go to the Red Cross,

like in 1914 with baguettes!

But there are no bowls of dates
for the Yemenis,

yet they suffer! And the Kurds?

We're neglecting the Kurds.
And the Sudanese?

50,000 dead in less than a year.
And who worries about them?

It's like the stock exchange:
Vietnam has the highest price,

the Sudanese the lowest,
and the Kurds are a bit weak.

You say you're on the victim's
side, but it's not true.

You choose victims. You have
fashionable victims, convenient to you.

No one could bear all the
unjust deaths, it's not human.

But if you look at why this and
not that, yearly income, skin color,

you discover strange things
within yourself:

a segregation of the dead,
a class struggle of the dead.

But Vietnam is unanimity,

it's good conscience regained,
it's joy, right, liberty.

Because Vietnam is the Americans

and the Americans are bad,

they're different from us,
ignorant, tyrants, colonialists.

40 million anti-
colonialists in France.

They hadn't realized it
during the war in Algeria,

but we've made
gigantic progress!

With the Americans, we don't
hesitate to say what we think.

And in the meantime

American investment in France
reaches two million dollars,

but there's no relation.

Here it is:

"Paris opens its doors
to let the military leave

and capital enter."

So we can be anti-American

and in solidarity with the
Third World in all tranquility.

You know what's worst?
I'm comfortable like this.

It's perfect.

It gives me the right to
drag it all in the mud

and to be the only good,
sensible and generous one.

The right-wing bastards,
the left-wing assholes. See?

There's no danger,
they won't move.

The Russians in 1917
were real men.

Here everyone stays in their place.
That's how it is in good families.

See the Americans in Vietnam: they send
blacks and farmers, students deferred.

Result: the students
take the luxury of protesting

and the "Great Society" the luxury
of having students who protest.

It's a concerto where
everyone plays their part.

You know why I detest
these Americans?

Because they do too much.

They do so much that
things start to change.

They made the rules and
everyone played their game.

But the idiots didn't realize it

and now they're changing
the rules of the game.

Prosperity, coexistence
could last indefinitely,

but it's them
that keep us from playing.

I was happy in my confusion.

And now the others
come to upset me.

That pig Johnson!
Bobby was more cunning.

He knew well the old shed
had resources to continue like that.

There were pro and cons,
yin and yang,

but it was still better
than 100 years ago.

And then with technical progress,
problems arise differently.

Old shed perhaps, but new generation
of leaders, free from prejudice,

who treat the workers
not as slaves, nor as pals,

but as associates

who cooperate at various levels
in the common quest for prosperity.

You discuss, you negotiate,
you associate. And then crack,

now grandpa goes crazy
and opens fire on the strikers.

Consternation! Escalation!
Suddenly everything is clearer.

If I were revolutionary instead of leftist,
I suppose I'd rejoice, say "Bravo!"

He removes the mask, shows his
ugly face and erases Budapest.

A generation was terrorized
with revolutionary massacres,

but now we've seen the counter-
revolutionaries aren't joking either.

We've forgotten
a little after Mr. Thiers.

The Germans were fascists,
that wasn't surprising.

We said they were
like that by nature.

But look at the Americans,

respectable people,
convinced democrats.

All the workers have cars,
they're peaceful.

Violence is the others,
war is the others.

They were forced to do it
to help others,

but now it's over.

Some trouble with the Russians,
but even that gets comfortable.

Interlude. Detente. Idyll.

Not at all, there's still
action somewhere, even violence.

Then the gods awake, their peace was
just war on hold, damn the idyll.

They land, they bomb,
throw napalm, torture, corrupt.

And everyone sickens:
military, women, children,

trees, livestock,
the North, the South.

Borders are crossed,
villages are deported.

And the world watches
and begins to understand.

Reason to rejoice, I tell you!

But I don't rejoice.

I only have one life

and I should be
willing to give mine

for the right to applaud
when they give theirs.

Otherwise it looks like
idiots on Sunday in the stadium.

"Go Vietnam!"

I'm blocked.

I don't want to understand.

It's like Vietnam became
something besides a country,

something besides a symbol.

An experience.

Between those who expect success
and those who expect failure

a kind of monstrous,
persistent complicity has set in.

And faced with all this,
I plug my eyes and my ears

because if it means anything,
it's the fact that everything persists

and there's no end
to anything, neither war,

nor cruelty, nor violence, nothing.

What did the assholes want
who gave me this book?

Everyone explains, but I don't
read or listen. I have no ears for this,

all I hear is a cry.

I don't know how to
negotiate with a cry.

You can't help but crawl like
a beast in search of the place

and time when you stop
hearing it, even for a minute.

I won't write their text,
I have nothing to say.

I'll come near you and speak
of a country that isn't Vietnam,

a country that doesn't exist.

I won't write, I don't know anything.
I don't want anything.

I'll tell them I'm afraid, I'm cold,

I love them all, I hate them,

we'll all die, we love to live.

I don't know anymore.

I don't know anything,
I won't write anything.

The interventionist policy
of the USA in South Vietnam

is sabotaging the Geneva
Accords as well as peace.

On July 20, 1954

a French general and a Vietminh
commissioner sign the Geneva accords.

The Indochina War,
the French war is over.

But the Vietnam War, the American
war has already started.

Since the end of 1949, to better tie
Paris to the Atlantic coalition,

Washington began helping
France to remain in Indochina.

In February 1951,
three years before Geneva,

Ho Chi Minh denounces the Americans as
the true enemies of Vietnamese revolution.

It's true that now the war
is financed by Washington.

April 1954. Dien Bien Phu
is about to fall.

The Laniel government
begs Washington

to intervene directly,
launching massive air raids

against the besiegers.

The American government
refuses to take this risk.

Dulles elaborates another strategy:

neglect the compromised French
ally, let them sign a bad peace,

freezing at least the Communist wave.

Then, from a
protected springboard,

prepare the anti-
communist counterattack.

The word is given on June 3 by Dulles,
six weeks before the accords.

The USA didn't want to fight,

but they also didn't want a peace
that in their eyes was only a truce.

The final declaration of the Geneva
Conference guarantees the Vietnamese

that their country, provisionally
divided for international detente,

will be reunified within two years.

The Americans
reject this document.

They say only that they will
not annul the accords by force.

Strangely everyone is satisfied
by this meager assurance.

Thus at the end of July 1954

the Americans, without fighting
and without making any commitment,

have obtained that the
victors of Dien Bien Phu

abandon a third of the territory
that Giap conquered by force.

Taking no account
of the Geneva promises

transforms this negotiation
into a fraud.

The Vietnamese will
remember this in the future

when negotiations are mentioned.

Now the American
counterattack begins.

Washington exploits the clauses
of the Geneva Accords

that permit the survival of a loyal
regime and ignores the others.

First operation:
the transfer of responsibility,

military and political, from
France to the United States.

From July 1954 to April 1956,

Washington obtains the withdrawal,
to its advantage,

of what remains
of the French presence.

The Vietminh signed with
the French who made promises

and find themselves faced by the
Americans, who accept none of them.

Second American operation:

establishment of a regime
of Catholic mandarins.

In two years, thanks to big checks,
witch hunts and exceptional laws,

an anti-communist bulwark of the
South Korean type is created in Saigon.

As for the elections for reunification
of the country, scheduled for 1956,

they're out of the question.

General Eisenhower wrote in his
memoirs that elections at that time

would have given 80% of
the votes to the communists.

At the end of 1956, the leaders
of Hanoi must contend with

two painful facts:

peaceful reunification
of Vietnam will not happen.

Saigon opposes it,
supported by Washington,

and neither Moscow nor Peking
are ready to take serious risks

to ensure the treaty's application.

Secondly, the tired French
have been replaced in Saigon,

always in violation of
the accords of '54,

by vengeful Americans.

The victors of Dien Bien Phu
see themselves cheated,

by a series of skillful deceptions,
of the victory reported on the ground.

They are driven back and enclosed
in the ghetto of the North,

which scarcity of agricultural
resources condemns to poverty

and thus, in the long term,
to dependence on China.

In the South there is
police repression.

Could the government of the North
accept this situation for long?

In 1958 the myth of peaceful
coexistence is still too new

to endanger the fragile
international detente.

The politics of Khrushchev
pressure Hanoi to patience.

But the order to fight
will come from the South.

South of the 17th parallel, in fact,

everything built by the left
is doomed to destruction.

The Diem government has its Gestapo
and its concentration camps.

Its rejection of
the elections in 1956

convinces the revolutionary Vietnamese
they have only one choice:

armed struggle.

From 1958 American observers report the
appearance of an organization called

National Liberation Front.

In September 1960, during the
Third Party Congress,

Hanoi agrees to give its support
to the partisans of the South.

Three months later,
on December 20, 1960,

the National Liberation Front
of South Vietnam

makes its existence
officially known.

From then, insurrection becomes
revolution against the Diem regime

that oppresses the South
and divides Vietnam.

The North will be ever more
involved in the struggle.

In February 1962,

Washington announces the creation
of an American command in Vietnam

making public its direct military
intervention in the civil war.

At the State Department they
speak of "resisting aggression,"

they recall the
precedent of Munich.

But the real precedent is the
Spanish Civil War

and the true role
of the USA in this war

is to defend an extreme-right clique
against the will of the people.

November 1, 1963,
the assassination of Diem,

with the complicity of
American special services,

makes the nature of the
conflict still more evident.

It's no longer a question of civil war
between the Vietnamese right and left,

but of American intervention

against the self-determination
of the Vietnamese people.

After 18 months of gimmicks,
a succession of puppet characters

and a last attempt to disguise
the nature of their action,

the Americans remove the mask
on February 5, 1965.

Unable to win the war
on the ground,

in the jungles and
rice patties of South Vietnam,

they bring it to the North,
bombing it systematically.

It's escalation.

From then the
escalation increases.

The bombings
whose images you've seen

are not war operations,

they are exactly
sessions of torture.

The aim is to subdue the victim,
to break his resistance

and the aggressors make
no mystery of it.

But this time the tortured is no
longer at the mercy of the torturer.

He fights and keeps fighting
until victory,

whose terms are already defined:

territorial integrity,

reunification, self-determination,
end of foreign interference.

The Americans are mistaken

to believe that
by bombing the North

they can win the war
in the South.

They will never, ever win this war.

And we will never, ever submit

because ours is
a patriotic war, a just war,

and we are determined to fight.

Even if it takes 5, 10,
20 years or more, we will win.

This idea of victory, which is not
conquest but recognition of a right,

it's useless to oppose
it with the idea of peace.

For a Vietnamese,

peace remains the only goal

but victory remains the only path.

End of the first part

With a hoarse voice

he pronounced the
charges against the woman.

He was a little man

with a gray-sleeved uniform.
He paced before her.

Shortly after,

two Thunderchiefs made
a turn around us.

We heard the rumble as they
passed close to the ground

and we heard explode
the bombs they launched.

When he got up

in his hand he had a knife

with a handle similar to

those used by farmers
to open coconuts.

The fighter-bombers are equipped
with 20 mm machine guns

that can shoot
6000 rounds per minute

producing a truly astonishing
series of explosions.

The farmers were always immobile

and contemplated the spectacle.

There was an F 105 rocket

that passed with a hiss

one meter above our heads.

All this was very strange.

And the farmers were
always immobile

and watched the spectacle.

All this was very strange.

I think that

if I had been a cameraman
for the news,

a television cameraman

from the ABC network
in New York or San Francisco,

or if I had been a cameraman
for the Soviet news,

that is what
I would have filmed.

But I live in Paris

and I was not in Vietnam.

A year and a half ago I wanted
to go to North Vietnam.

I remember I wrote
to the delegation

from North Vietnam here and
asked them for authorization

to come and
film in their country.

After eight months
I found out

that Hanoi had refused,

I guess because
for them I was not

a trustworthy guy,
with foundations

or an ideology that was

a bit vague, on whom

they couldn't rely.

In the end, I think

it was a very good reason.

They weren't wrong.

At the time, I wanted to go.

Since it was difficult
to make films

in France, I told myself
that I must go

to Cuba, to Algeria,

or as usual,

to Yugoslavia. But then this
refusal from Hanoi

showed me that since

I'm Parisian, there was no
reason not to make films in Paris.

So I made the decision
in every film

to speak about Vietnam.
At random, if you like.

Let's say rather randomly.

When my colleagues asked me

to participate in this film,

I said:
"Yes, I'm full of ideas."

But then I realized these ideas

weren't good. It wasn't just that
Hanoi refused I go there.

I believe they were right
because I could have

done things which would have
done more harm than good.

The fact is,
I think all these ideas were

falsely generous.

Besides it seemed difficult
to address certain topics,

to speak of bombs

when they don't fall on your head
and you speak in the abstract.

I thought for example to take
the naked body of a woman

which is one of the warmest
and most alive things there is,

and to simply describe,

like Robbe-Grillet, or like Flaubert
since I don't like Robbe-Grillet,

to show the effects of a
cluster bomb on a woman's body.

I wanted to put it simply,

but at the same time

there was a certain
aesthetic pursuit

and I couldn't,

or rather I separated,
I couldn't make them coincide,

to express the form and content

at the same time.

So it was bad because
this idea, this form,

was not inside the content,
was not a natural expression

like the skin
which covers the body

and is as much a part
of it as the heart.

I also wanted to speak of
defoliation, of rivers poisoned,

to show all this

and not just the people.

From the moment we don't fight
with weapons in hand

we are far from all that,

and it's all very well
that our heart bleeds,

but in fact this blood

has no relation with
the blood of any wounded.

I would say for this reason

there was a certain shame,
they were shameful ideas,

like when you sign
appeals for peace.

In the end

there is one thing we can do.

After all we make films

and as a director

the best thing
I can do for Vietnam,

rather than trying
to invade it with a type

of generosity that
necessarily forces things,

is on the contrary
to let Vietnam invade us

and make us realize
the place it occupies

in our daily lives,
everywhere.

Then we realize

that after all Vietnam

is not alone,
there is all of Africa

and all of South America,

and so we must start to create.
The motto of Che Guevara:

"Create two, three, many Vietnams"

we can apply it to ourselves,
creating a Vietnam within us.

If you're in Guinea
you'll be against the Portuguese,

if you're in Chicago
you'll be in favor of the blacks,

if you're in South America
you'll be in favor of Latin America

which is an entirely
colonized country,

first colonized by
Spanish and French culture

and today colonized by
the American economy.

We must create a
Vietnam in ourselves.

For example in France
last summer

the major strikes that
were held at Rhodiaceta

in Besan�on or Saint-Nazaire

were episodes profoundly
tied to Vietnam.

A worker at Rhodiaceta
must draw lessons

from the struggle of
North Vietnam

when he fights with his union.

He must learn
ideas of principle

because if he finds the pace of
work at Rhodiaceta too heavy,

and he can no longer live,
or sleep, neither think

nor read,

he is truly a subhuman,
a byproduct

and he feels exploited.

I, for example,

being a director
who works in France,

am completely separated
from most

of the population

and from the working class
in particular.

And my personal struggle,
which is against American cinema,

against its economic and
aesthetic imperialism,

which has now corrupted
the world cinema,

in the end is a similar struggle.
Yet we don't speak,

the public worker doesn't
see my films. Between me and him

is the same fracture

that exists between me and Vietnam,
or rather between him and Vietnam.

We are little interested
in each other

and only by a
sense of generosity,

which doesn't truly
correspond to reality.

We don't know each other
in that I am trapped

in a type of cultural prison

and the worker at
Rhodiaceta in a type

of economic prison.

Vietnam today is a symbol

of resistance
more general than the others

and so we must
speak of it incessantly.

In this regard there's
a text by Breton

in his first
manifestos which says:

"I believe in the absolute virtue
of anything that takes place,

spontaneously or not,
in the sense of non-acceptance,

and no reasons
of general efficacy,

from which long, revolutionary
patience draws its inspiration,

reasons to which I defer,

will make me deaf to the cry which
can be wrenched from us at every moment

by the frightful disproportion between
what is gained and what is lost,

between what is granted
and what is suffered."

The two phrases to underline in this
text are: "long revolutionary patience"

and the other is "the cry".

Well, we who are not in
a revolutionary situation

in France

must instead cry louder.

Perhaps the others
can do it less.

People like Regis Debray
don't cry, nor Che Guevara,

they are the
true revolutionaries.

But we who are not, we must

listen and retransmit this cry
as often as possible.

Cut!

The American singer Tom Paxton explains
the purpose of the war for the USA:

protect Vietnam from the Vietnamese.

Michele Ray, who was reporting
from the American side,

lived for three weeks with those
who the press call "Vietcong",

the Americans "Victor Charlie" and the
Vietnamese "National Liberation Front".

On her return, she no longer
saw the war the same way.

Every day 100 tons of napalm,
200 tons of bombs of all types

flow into the one
South Vietnam

and by the contribution
of the one Air Force.

After three weeks elsewhere, with
Victor Charlie as the GIs say,

I was brought back to a zone
occupied by United States troops.

Officially, I suppose
I should be happy.

And yet I suffocate. I feel
crushed by their implacable force.

I no longer want to see
them, or hear their jokes,

and above all this incessant
noise of helicopters

that transport with the same
indifference men going to war,

supplies of food and ammunition,

or the rockets that fire on
everything that moves on the ground.

Three weeks during which I winced
at the least motor or reactor noise

and when the bombings
got too close,

like the NLF soldiers,
the simple farmers,

the women and children,

I hid myself in hideouts
excavated to a meter deep

with a bamboo cane to breathe

while above us the
apocalypse was unleashed.

The fear, the lack of air,
the ground that shakes.

We hold hands.

We need to feel
that human warmth exists.

Calm returned, the danger receded,
life got back to normal

and their laughter touched
the depths of my heart.

But Joe, Jack, Mike don't
want to believe this enemy

has the calm security of one who
knows that he will triumph one day.

They prefer to think of the
official propaganda statistics

affirming:
"the Vietcong has bad morale."

They'd like to win over
this population that they bomb.

So the health operations multiply.

The GIs turn into nurses
and their eyes clearly say:

"See? We're not monsters."

Their conscience is clean

and the American journalist
can write a beautiful article.

The river patrols work
24 hours day.

Every load, every junk
is inspected.

Three American officials for
one Vietnamese police official.

Only he has the right to check
the papers, written in Vietnamese,

and to board the boats.

Despite these strict,
incessant controls,

every day junks loaded with
war material and supplies

pass to the other side.

In other zones, particularly
in Binh Dinh province,

because of the
continuous bombings

the population has been
evacuated to refugee camps.

But the fields are remote
and bicycles are rare.

So every morning the Koreans
of the Tiger Division

accompany them under
armed escort to the harvest.

In the evening, on the return,
with arms fully loaded,

it is chaos.

The soldiers are
always there, omnipresent.

The Vietnamese do not like these
Koreans who frighten them.

They don't forget either that
during the Japanese occupation

the Koreans were
guarding the camps.

Every week the number of
refugees increases.

Watching them I can only think

of what one of my Vietcong
friends told me:

"The land conquered by the
Americans means:

good people
moved to refugee camps

which we call
concentration camps instead.

Perhaps the imperialists
define them as refugees,

but they are on our side
and act as informants.

Their heart is not
with the other side.

For them the enemy is the
Americans who bomb them,

who force them to leave
villages, abandoning everything.

Not all are armed guerrillas,
but they are all on our side."

Vietcong or only a suspect?

They look at me, size me up.

I would like to wink at them,

tell them that if I were
Vietnamese I'd fight with them,

because I can't manage to believe
in the Ky government and its puppets.

An American army of 465,000
men waiting for reinforcements

and a South Vietnamese army in which
desertions increase every month.

The South Vietnamese believe
this war is not theirs,

that it is an American war.

Thus they are treated as
"lousy little dirty bugouts"

by the American advisors who
despise them and who they despise.

The American officials
say this surprising thing:

"Why aren't we advisors to the
Vietcong? They're the soldiers!"

Reinforcements brought by helicopters.
Searches of deserted villages.

Surroundings of houses
inspected closely.

Buried containers
are brought to light

and Victor Charlie's treasures, some
medicines, are thrown down and crushed.

The inhabitants
have fled or hidden.

Perhaps they've
hunkered down here somewhere,

but you can't see anything.

Some suspects. But in
South Vietnam, who isn't?

Even women and children
must be followed.

They too will be questioned.

It's always difficult to be a witness,
especially the powerless witness of a war.

Being behind the camera
does not mean being neutral.

I film one aspect,
but my heart is there

with these suspects,
with this child.

The bullets hiss in the ears
of those who refuse to speak.

And the long march resumes in search
of an enemy who hides without rest

and who, ultimately, keeps the
initiative of the operations.

Michele Ray filmed these images
of war. Then the camera went crazy

and tore the film.

What emerged resembled more than
all the rest the cry she wanted to hurl.

General Westmoreland, commander in chief
of the American forces in Vietnam,

presents the official
view of the USA.

The lesson of Victor Charlie

is that the response to an atom
bomb is not another atom bomb,

but the oldest form of human
resistance: guerrilla warfare.

We asked Fidel Castro,
an expert on the matter,

to tell us how and why
the guerrilla must win.

With regard to the question

whether armed struggle is
the only path to liberation,

all I can say

is that, at least in
the case of our country,

we have no other choice.

And in our opinion,

in the case of most of the
countries of Latin America

there is no other way
besides armed struggle.

It also seems to be this way
for many other countries in Asia

and in Africa.

In general, imperialism
always intervenes

with every means, joining forces
with the oligarchy

of every country, to prevent

the democratic triumph
of the revolution

and keeps the people chained
with a kind of Gordian knot

that can only be broken
through armed struggle.

The path of armed struggle is not
a path chosen by the revolutionaries,

but is the path imposed
on the people by the oppressors.

The people have only
two alternatives:

to bend or to fight.

And to fight in the only way
in which they can beat an enemy

who possesses greater
economic resources,

infinitely superior, and
many more technological resources.

Guerrilla warfare means

using the resources
of the territory

and above all using the
social resources of a people

to overcome the advantages
open to the enemy

in terms of technical resources

and economic resources.

The guerrilla, through astute
and very flexible tactics,

through maximum exploitation of all
the advantages of the territory,

through mobilization of
social resources, that is,

of the widest strata
of the population,

which are the exploited strata,
the worker and farmer ones,

and drawing inspiration
from a just cause,

from a very strong
moral principle

which makes him able
to support privations,

to adapt to the most difficult
conditions of life,

enters into the only way

to try to achieve a
revolutionary objective.

This is what we have done

to achieve all the objectives
we are making in our country.

In order to cover these
mountains with roads,

to create decent living
conditions for the people,

to eradicate ignorance,

to advance in every field
our people have had to fight.

We did and now
we are progressing,

but at the same time we prepare
to defend what we have realized.

We know that

no country in the situation created
by imperialism in the world today

can feel secure. Therefore
we must work on two fronts:

on a creative front to realize
the objectives of the revolution

and also on a
defensive front, preparing

to face any
situation of danger

or aggression
against the country.

Vietnam has demonstrated
definitively to the world,

to all the revolutionaries

and to all the people
confronted with imperialism,

that not even with
the most modern technology,

with the largest
and most powerful army,

and not even with
a coalition of forces

well-armed like those deployed
by the USA in Vietnam,

is it possible to break down
the revolutionary guerrilla movement

supported by the people.

I believe today no one doubts

that the American army
has lost its war against

the heroic people of Vietnam

and we believe that is one
of the greatest services

that the people of Vietnam
have done for the world.

For the Vietnamese people it's
formidable to think that an American

would demonstrate in this manner,
sacrificing himself

and also sacrificing
his family's happiness

for a just cause. I think that

one must be infinitely
true to oneself,

and courageous, of course,
to perform a similar gesture.

For us the character
of Morrison,

the very moving
gesture that he made,

has attracted not only esteem

and a deep respect,
a deep admiration,

but I think that
it has further increased

the goodwill of the Vietnamese
people towards the American people.

America attacked a nation
that had done it no harm.

We defend ourselves
from bombings,

from the massacres and
all the atrocities,

but we also think that in
America there is another war,

a war of the people
against all that is unjust.

We trust the American
people very much

and this gesture has
increased this trust in us

and this hope that indeed
one day the two peoples

rather than fighting,

will unite to combat the wrong.

I imagine she must have been
so in agreement with her husband

to not find his gesture
so shocking. I mean that

she must truly approve of this
gesture to preserve such serenity

and self-control.

I truly admire her very much.

Those who until then
were still hesitant,

after this gesture could
better take a position.

In this sense he shows the way

for those who truly want to see
the truth, who truly seek it.

I believe that everything right
and true will triumph in the end.

These anti-patriotic demonstrations
blamed by General Westmoreland

culminated on April 15, 1967.

From Central Park to the United Nations
and in the streets of American cities

more than half a million
people demonstrate.

There's the National Council of Churches,
the SNCC, the American Indians,

the Communist Party, the non-
affiliated unions and many others.

It's the largest mass demonstration
in the history of the USA.

It's also the end of an era.

American society
disintegrates at full speed

and the monolithic State is
not enough to consolidate it.

The right-wing militarist forces,
official or not, mobilize as they can,

but those who pass from protest
to resistance are already appearing.

Waving the flag of the National
Liberation Front of South Vietnam

they openly identify with the

revolutionaries who attack American
imperialism on three continents.

The draft cards which will be
burned during the demonstration

testify to the movement
against mobilization

that already involves
thousands of young Americans.

There are also representatives
of "Black Power".

The others stayed at home.
They prepare for the coming summer.

In a few minutes,
this film will end.

Leaving the theater, many of you
will return to a world without war.

It's ours as well, and we know how
easy it is to forget certain realities.

We are far from Vietnam.

And the Vietnam of our
emotions and indignation

is sometimes as far from
the real Vietnam as indifference.

We live in a society that has
made an art of hiding its own ends,

its own vertigo, and
above all its own violence.

This war isn't a historical accident, or
the late settling of a colonial problem.

It is there, all around us,
within us.

It begins when we start to understand
the Vietnamese are fighting for us

and to measure
our debt to them.

When the Vietnamese say stop
the war, but not at any price,

we say they are unreasonable.

It's true these Vietnamese
are unreasonable and crazy,

and their intransigence violates
habits tied to our privileges.

But the Vietnamese madness is perhaps
the political wisdom of our time

and the first honest step
we can take with them

is to try to look their
challenge in the face.

Faced with this challenge, the choice
of the rich society is simple:

they must implement the physical
destruction of all that resists them,

a task which risks going beyond
their means of destruction,

or they must make a total
transformation in themselves.

Perhaps that's asking too much of
a society at the height of its power.

If they reject this choice,

they must sacrifice their
reassuring illusions,

accept this war of the poor
against the rich as inevitable.

And lose it.