by Esther Johnson, Sheffield Hallam University and Blanche Pictures
LIBERATION RADIO: using archive film and oral histories to retrieve the little-known story of American Military Deserters during the war in Vietnam
By artist and filmmaker Esther Johnson (Professor of Film and Media Arts at Sheffield Hallam University)
Project Introduction
In 1968 a group of American Military deserters went to the North Vietnamese mission in Stockholm with one object in mind: to join the army they had been drafted to fight. Instead they were recruited for the propaganda war, and used magnetic tape, pop music, and political rhetoric to persuade other American servicemen to desert. Their recordings were transported from Sweden to Vietnam by diplomatic bag, and broadcast from transmitters on the rooftops of Hanoi, and revolutionary bases in the countryside, sometimes during aerial bombardment.
This clandestine story is the subject of ‘Liberation Radio’, a project named after the North Vietnam-based radio station that operated from 1 February 1962 until 31 August 1976. Established to promote the reunification of Vietnam, the station broadcast information on the war to soldiers and civilians nationwide and to sympathizers around the world, helping them to better understand the Vietnamese struggle against invasion by the US. During this period the station broadcast for ten hours a day in Vietnamese, French, Chinese, Khmer, and English. General Vo Nguyen Giap reportedly said that, “The Liberation Radio Station was a strong battalion that contributed to our victory.”
In order to revive the circuit of communication that Liberation Radio once inspired, I collaborated with sound artist Nhung Nguyễn (aka Sound Awakener), and historian and BBC broadcaster Matthew Sweet to create an interdisciplinary audio-visual installation work playing homage to this forgotten story. The film project premiered as an immersive gallery installation at Hanoi’s contemporary exhibition space MANZI from 28 May — 13 June 2021 for which we also produced an accompanying booklet and a 2.5 hour online event. The film festival premiere took place at the 65th BFI London Film Festival in October 2021, with further screenings in November at the Leeds International Film Festival where I was also a jury member for the International Short Film Award.
Film Process
The script formulated for ‘Liberation Radio’ includes oral history contributions from two participants from the original Liberation Radio in North Vietnam. Vincent Strollo, a US military deserter and antiwar activist from Philadelphia who left his base in Germany and sought humanitarian asylum in Sweden, where he still resides; and Hang Nguyễn, a Liberation Radio journalist and announcer in Hanoi between 1972 until it was disbanded in 1976.
In a wide-ranging interview, recorded by Matthew Sweet in Stockholm in January 2020, Vincent recalls his membership of the American Deserters Committee and his dealings with North Vietnamese officials in Stockholm. He also performs some of the surviving scripts from Liberation Radio programs, giving us a sense of the tone and style of the original recordings, which are now lost. In the second interview recorded by Sweet in Ho Chi Minh City in June 2019 (during a trip supported by the British Council of which I was also a delegate); Hang discusses her memories of joining the staff of Liberation Radio, broadcasting under fire, and recreates some of the on-air idents she used during this period. The final work attempts to present the varied audio-visual material researched and recorded for the project in a dramatic and playful manner that evokes the popular culture of the period. With the montage, use of archive film and sound, I was keen to convey the atmosphere of paranoia thrillers in the late 1960s and 1970s, when anxieties about propaganda, brainwashing, and war produced films such as Alan J Pakula’s ‘The Parallax View’ (1974), and the 1968 presidential TV ad campaigns for Richard Nixon.
Inspired by project research I developed a list of themes to focus my archive film search which then extended into a detailed film database. I first looked for US military footage from the war in Vietnam that through montage was then subverted to tell an antiwar narrative rather than the original objective of the footage. For example, some of the featured footage is declassified US military film which was originally intended for those who believed in and were deeply invested in the invasion. I also looked for imagery synonymous with perceptions of ‘America’. Cropping images to create visual homologies — a technique used repeatedly in both Nixon’s ad campaigns and Pakula’s Parallax corporation sequence — highlights the similarities between very different subjects. The final film installation combines video material I sourced from 52 public domain films (shortlisted from a selection of 450+) and a scripted narrative that conjures the cloak-and-dagger activities of the covert network of anti-war activists and state intelligence operatives who managed the movement of deserters from Japan through the Soviet Union to Sweden. The film script is narrated in Vietnamese, Swedish and English, so there was careful consideration of how multi-lingual subtitles might be used to make the script available to both Vietnamese- and English-speaking audience members. In addition to Strollo and Hang, the narrators include English actors Lisa Bowerman and David Warner. Star of countless films including Karel Reisz’s Morgan: A Suitable Case for Treatment, and Sam Peckinpah’s Straw Dogs (1971), David met US deserters in the 1970s when working in Sweden.
Working with Archive Film
Archives ask for a form of visual listening. Full of clues, mysteries, and hauntings, archive film has an immediacy to a particular period and place. You are able to witness the past as it unfolds, standing outside of time whilst having one foot embedded in a particular time. I am interested in travelling into the unknown like an explorer in an attempt to find something new. There is a thrill and magic in making connections and envisaging the potential in disparate elements to create a new filmic tapestry. There are also times when serendipity takes over, and it’s important to be alive to such moments, allowing material to self-determine. For me, often the most memorable footage are scenes that evoke strong feelings, details and intimate moments that may suggest multiple narratives or subtexts. My aim is to perceive something special in images that others may have discarded or ignored; then weave these distinct threads into a coherent new whole. Spinning a web from leftovers allows one to glimpse possible futures found in the past, and inject new life into something that may have been forgotten.
‘Liberation Radio’ has been funded by FAMLAB (Film, Archives and Music Lab) Fund as part of the British Council’s Heritage of Future Past project in Việt Nam
Information regarding the project can be found HERE Interview about the project for the HistFest channel can be watched HERE
Instagram: @liberationradio
Twitter: @libradioproject
Facebook: @liberationradioproject
Website: blanchepictures.com/liberation-radio