Vietnam Television (VTV) will broadcast the documentary series titled “Ky uc Viet Nam” (Memoirs of Vietnam), which features the country from 1964 to 1981 and was produced and preserved by Japanese news agency, Nihon Denpa News (NDN).

After three years being in negotiation to receive the sole colored version and two years of working with a roomful of archives, Vietnam Television will broadcast the first episode on VTV1 on Aug 19 to commemorate the August Revolution.

The documentary was shot in the north of Vietnam in the 1960s after a group of NDN filmmakers arrived in Hanoi and asked to meet with President Ho Chi Minh and place their representative office in Vietnam.

With President Ho’s consent, NDN was the only foreign television to place their representative office in Hanoi during all these years and to provide extensive coverage on the northern Vietnam between 1964 and 1981, particularly during the bloodiest warring years, which began when the bombardment took place in Feb 1965 until the country gained independence in both the north and south following the 1973 Paris Convention.

During the 17 years, the Japanese filmmakers roamed Hanoi and other places in the vicinity with their 16mm celluloid cameras, capturing all that they witnessed, including the footages of Fidel Castro, President Ho Chi Minh and average people.

Its 1,510 carefully-made documentaries are well preserved and of good quality and feature Japanese comments which were used back then by NDN, which was established in 1960 and had overseas bureaus all over Asia.

“The documentary series, which depicts a range of topics from politics to culture and people’s daily lives, does not only mean a lot to television staff but also to us all, those who lived during those years and the following generations. They are priceless for their authenticity and objectiveness as well as the Japanese filmmakers’ respect to the host country. The films also offer sympathetic, emotional footages and perspectives, which viewers can relate to and recognize themselves or their relatives in,” commented journalist Le Quang Minh, from VTV.

“It’s an interesting meeting after all these years. In 1968, a 20-year-old camera student, I met the Japanese filmmakers, the only foreigners seen in Hanoi at that time. We Vietnamese filmmakers weren’t able to shoot that much or preserve the films as well as our Japanese colleagues did,” said cameraman Nguyen Huu Tuan.

VTV journalists Xuan Tung and Gia Hien, who are in charge of the series, are quite concerned about how fast their staff is compiling the films.

“We only made 16 complete episodes and are compiling 15 others, which is enough to be broadcast for two months. The job is painstakingly slow as the amount of archives is huge, and the historical witnesses appearing in the films also need to be identified and interviewed. As the Japanese filmmakers shot the films to air on their television on a daily basis then, there were very few comments or notations on the events or witnesses,” Tung said.

“Ky Uc Viet Nam” will be televised at 9.50pm on VTV1 from Monday to Thursday, and rebroadcast at 11.50am on VTV3 from Tuesday to Friday.

The Vietnamese television staff hopes to receive viewers’ feedback and further information on kyucvietnam.vn.