Le dix-septième parallele

The Vietnamese village of VinLinh is located a few miles from the coast, in what was called the 'demilitarized zone'. In 1967 the place is under attack from three sides: the land artillery from the south, the naval guns from the east, and the bombs from above. The cliché-information on the TV-news does not give any information on how people live under these circumstances: Vietnam is translated into images of death and destruction. In this film, Joris Ivens (cooperating with Marceline Loridan for the first time) shows how people manage to survive. Working under a constant alert, he reveals a society that functions according to a newly developed 'normalcy'. Day and night the war is taken into account. In underground schools, children learn just enough English ("Hands up!"; "Drop your gun!") to efficiently deal with the arrest of pilots who have been shot down. When for a moment bombs are not dropped the people plant rice, close the craters or, if they are large enough, put fish in them. Ivens shows the fact that for the community of VinLinh 'the enemy' is almost an abstract notion, that becomes concrete only occasionally. Because both parties do not meet in the film, Ivens avoids every form of conventional heroism.