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SEAPAVAA Newsletter |
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LAOS: Repatriation of Lao films
The front of the film vault, Lao National Film Archive July 6, 1998 will always be a red letter day for the Lao film industry. It was the day that 1,192 Lao films were repatriated by the Vietnam Film Institute (VFI) to the Lao National Film Archive. These films were processed in Vietnam in the 1960's and 70's when Laos had no processing facilities. At that time, only the prints were brought to Laos, leaving the negatives and other copies in Vietnam. Since 1965, the Vietnamese film archivists began collecting films to preserve them. These films were to become part of the National Archiving Film Collection of Vietnam. During this time too, part of the growing collection were the Lao documentaries and feature films processed there. While Lao and Vietnamese films were both restored and preserved in the same storage vault, each collection was carefully catalogued separately. In 1985, the VFI started negotiations with the Cinema Department of the Laos Ministry of Information and Culture about the repatriation but the VFI was requested to hold on to the films while a film vault with suitable storage conditions was being built in Laos. In early 1998, the new film vault was completed in Vientiane and the official repatriation was held in July of the same year. During the repatriation ceremony, the Laos Minister of Information and Culture presented the Second Class Laos noble model "Isala" to the VFI in recognition of the efforts of VFI in collecting, restoring, and preserving the films for the past 38 years. The VFI expressed hope that the repatriation of Lao films would further strengthen the Laos and Vietnam relations and promote the SEAPAVAA spirit of "working together to preserve our heritage".
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