There are only a few days left until the 10th National Congress of the Vietnam Cinema Association officially takes place. Sir, please tell us, what are the special points of this term Congress?
- The 10th Congress, term 2026 - 2031 with the slogan "Solidarity - Innovation - Creativity - Contribution" takes place in a very special context with many new fundamental points. The first important new point is that central specialized literary and artistic associations, including the Vietnam Cinema Association, have officially become members of the Vietnam Fatherland Front. This change in organizational structure and management will certainly have a profound impact on the operating methods of the association in the next term.
Participating in the Front system requires the association not only to stop at its traditional role as a place to gather members, encourage creativity, and protect the legitimate rights of artists, but also to shoulder a greater responsibility when actively participating in community movements and great national unity.
In addition, the Congress takes place in the atmosphere that the entire cultural sector is deeply grasping the Party's new resolutions and orientations on cultural and artistic development. This promises to create a new breath of life, helping the creative and integrated activities of Vietnamese cinema become richer and more quality.
To realize those new goals, according to you, what breakthrough solutions should the Vietnam Cinema Association focus on in terms of personnel and operating methods?
- It is thought that the first key solution is to open the door and proactively attract and admit young members, potential factors who are willing to contribute to the development of cinema. Besides many veteran members with a long history of experience, there also need to be public artists. Currently, there are many young artists and filmmakers who work in art day and night with passion and dedication. However, a part of them still does not really understand the role of the association, or does not have many conditions to access the association. In the next term, the association needs to promote communication work so that young talents voluntarily join and stick with the association.
Second, it is expected that delegates at the Congress will wisely select worthy delegates who can show inheritance. How to have representative faces from different regions, harmonizing age and gender. Besides the re-elected personnel, the Executive Committee needs new faces. In the future, the difficulties and challenges for cinema are very large, so it is even more demanding that the association collective must be dynamic, united and creative than ever before.
Third, the association must proactively adapt to the era of digital transformation and artificial intelligence (AI). The trend requires not only stopping at "applying digital technology" in a single way, but must implement digital transformation in a synchronous and fundamental way.
Socialization and autonomy are inevitable trends, but in reality, mobilizing resources for film activities is still very difficult. What are your proposals on mechanisms to remove barriers (if any)?
- The policy of bringing major events such as film festivals or organizing major events with high professionalism to be directly undertaken by specialized associations is very correct. However, the obstacle is still in the phrase "if conditions are met" in guiding documents, which inadvertently becomes a barrier that prevents the decentralization from being truly thoroughly implemented.
Along with other central specialized associations, the Vietnam Cinema Association is inherently a place to gather highly qualified creative forces and many reputable appraisal experts. Therefore, national-scale events that the association has been and is implementing deserve to be directly included in the National Target Program on cultural development, rather than stopping at the "ask-give" mechanism. Only in this way can associations assigned tasks by the Party and State have enough resources to raise the scale and improve professional quality for creative activities of high value.
Sir, looking from a market perspective, we have had films with hundreds of billions of VND in revenue. But has Vietnamese cinema really become a true "cultural industry"?
- We have been and are forming a film market with encouraging revenue growth from box offices. However, to call it a true "cine industry", it is still quite dispersed.
A developed film industry requires a closed ecosystem: From production, distribution, import and export, organization of film markets, domestic and international film festivals... to research, storage, training, and analysis of tastes of all audiences. To develop sustainably, cinema cannot "stand" and "go" alone. It is necessary to closely combine with tourism and promote the national image. Combine multi-sectoral and even higher interdisciplinary, even trans-sectoral creative values with the fields of: Advertising, media, performing arts, publishing, printing, promoting the development of applied fine arts, making souvenir products (from famous film characters), building background tours and culinary arts, staging real-scene stages in localities to not only honor famous landmarks, but also promote traditional artistic values, cultural identity, and Vietnamese people.
When these links synchronously move and stimulate demand from each other, Vietnamese cinema will truly become a truly spearhead cultural industry.
Thank you very much, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Do Lenh Hung Tu for the conversation! Wishing the 10th National Congress of the Vietnam Cinema Association a great success!
