The Cu Chi Tunnels
During the Vietnam War, thousands of people lived in an elaborate system of underground tunnels in Cu Chi Province, Vietnam. Originally built in the French era, the tunnel was expanded during its American presence. When the Americans started bombing Cu Chi’s villages, the survivors went underground and stayed there for the duration of the war.
Secret tunnels linking villages to villages, often passing under American bases, served not only as fortifications for Viet Cong guerrillas but as centers of community life. Hidden beneath the destroyed villages are schools and public spaces, where children are born and war victims undergo surgery: underground are schools and public spaces, where lovers get married, and private spaces, where lovers meet. There is even a theater where performers entertain with songs, dances and traditional stories.
The film The Cu Chi Tunnels, directed by Mickey Grant, tells the story of life underground, told by those who lived it. This is the story of a surgeon, an artist, an actor, an engineer and the few survivors of a guerrilla who leaves the tunnels every night to fight a much stronger enemy.
Associated with the guerrillas were the Viet Cong documentary photographers whose footage of war from the Vietnamese perspective and footage of love, life and death in the tunnels was preserved and used in film. This extremely rare footage has an interesting echo; we see and hear an actress performing in a war tunnel, and then hear her describe her experience nearly three decades later.
