New Wave: Re-Exploring the Past to Navigate the Future
Con người có cố có ông, như cây có cội, như sông có nguồn.
Everyone has ancestors, like every tree has roots, and every river a source.
– Vietnamese proverb
Holding my newborn daughter close in 2018, a flood of memories cascades. Each magnifies vulnerable childhood moments that only fully crystallized after completing my film, New Wave in 2024.
Among those memories, one distinctly emerges: It’s 1985 and I'm five-years-old in the backseat of a car, probably without a seatbelt, headed to the mall with some wild teenagers. Those teenagers were my uncle and aunt, my mother’s younger siblings, who were often charged with caring for me and my sister while she worked to support our family. It’s not the car nor the trip that remains etched in my brain, but the faces of these rebels who were forced into roles of responsibility. This shift in roles not only shaped our family's narrative but also deepened a rift that led to decades of estrangement from my mother.
Though they were few and far between, I cherish those memories. The times when those teenagers could afford a tank of gas to drive us around town, blasting new wave music through their rattling sound systems. With the volume cranked up and the windows down, it seemed as though the music carried our sorrows away—offering brief reprieves from a life framed by a tumultuous home, undiagnosed PTSD, and numerous hardships.
From the old archival photos of them in the film, you’d never know that just a handful of years before they all narrowly escaped death from bombs flying overhead, or that in the process of fleeing their homeland of Vietnam, their boat nearly sank at sea. But that knowledge was visceral and intimate for me. After decades of absorbing violent and tragic narratives dominated by toxic male perspectives, I realized it was time to tell a different story—one centered on joy, celebration, and reinvention.
Each time I looked into my daughter's eyes as the filmmaking process unfolded, my resolve to share our story intensified. Determined to bridge past and present for her, I found the courage to delve deeper into these memories. This backwards journey led me to seek answers from my aunts and uncles, whose stories of survival—intertwined with their love for music, friendship, and escapes—underscored how our family’s painful past was crucial for understanding the depth of our bonds.
“By understanding where we come from, we are better equipped to navigate where we are going.”
However, the more I questioned my family, the more they resisted, seemingly unprepared to confront their traumatic memories. Recognizing the fragility of our relationship, I stepped back and sought insights from others in my community. Interestingly enough, the universe seems to provide exactly what you need when you're ready to receive; these strangers became not only participants in my film but also friends who openly shared their stories with me. Their accounts resonated with my own experiences and shed light on my estrangement from my mother. These revelations compelled me to establish a narrative foundation that would connect my daughter to her heritage and begin stitching together our family’s broken links.
I may never fully recover from a childhood marked by the absence of my mother, a similar reality many refugees face whose wounds might never fully mend from war and displacement. Yet, the sacrifices of our predecessors who fought to survive have afforded younger generations like mine the privilege to seek healing. Initially, this filmmaking endeavor with New Wave was a means to avoid a painful past, but it evolved into a powerful tool for understanding these realities, unexpectedly guiding me on a path toward healing. Re-exploring my past has taught me an invaluable lesson to treasure ordinary moments, like those car rides that can reveal profound truths. By understanding where we come from, we are better equipped to navigate where we are going.
Elizabeth Ai
director/writer
