Without a doubt, ‘Mùa Ổi’ (The Season of Guavas) is the most significant film in director Đặng Nhật Minh’s career. Released in 2000 at numerous international film festivals and subsequently in 2002 by the Gaumont cinema chain for two months throughout France, the film is an adaptation of the short story ‘Ngôi Nhà Xưa’ (The Old House), written by the director himself and published in 1993 in the Văn nghệ Journal.

Produced under extremely limited conditions of the late 1990s and early 2000s, in terms of budget, technology, manpower, and freedom of expression, ‘The Season of Guavas’ calmly yet skillfully uncovers the bittersweet memories of a tumultuous four-decade period through the eyes of a 13-year-old boy (the character of Mr. Hòa). The boy’s silent drifting, though fragile and filled with anxiety, is still warmed by human affection—a belief that the director consistently holds, not only in ‘The Season of Guavas,’ but in all his films: a belief in justice, compassion, and the inherent goodness in people caught up in the wrong historical period. The sadness is softened, allowing each viewer to introspect, contemplate, and heal themselves.

Visual artists will find this film particularly compelling due to its protagonist based on Mr. Hoán, a gentle, absent-minded man with a great love for flowers. He was a renowned model for several decades at the “Yết Kiêu” Fine Arts University.

Continuing the series of Đặng Nhật Minh film screenings as part of the APD’s Green Red & Yellow Open Archive program, a screening of ‘The Season of Guavas’ and a Q&A session with the director will take place at 2:30 PM on Saturday, December 16th.

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About Green Red & Yellow 2003 Open Archive

The “Green Red & Yellow” Open Archive was held on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the event (2003 – 2023). This is an opportunity for professionals, creative practitioners as well as the public to access important information and documents of the project after two decades. Thereby understanding more about contemporary art practice in Vietnam during the exciting, dynamic “open-door” era under great impacts and changes in the economic, political, social, and ideological environment after the Doi Moi (or “renovation”) period.

Open Archive is part of the APD Art Library Project, initiated and implemented by the APD Centre for Art Patronage and Development starting in 2022 to promote research and the development of art education with documents collected, restored and archived in-depth and systematically to provide information about Vietnamese contemporary art to professionals and the public. Key activities of the Open Archive program include online and in-person Open Archive, talks/seminars, and workshops with topics related to the archives of APD’s Art Library.