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Documentary Film Screening: 'On Healing Land, Birds Perch"

A screening of a short documentary film about the legacy of the Vietnam War, in Vietnam and in America, followed by a post-film discussion with director Naja Pham Lockwood, on October 15, 2025 8-9:30 pm at Loew Auditorium in the Black Family Visual Arts Center.

This screening is free and open to the public, and it is in conjunction with the Fall 2025 course ASCL 70.22 "Developing Vietnam." This innovative course is part of Dartmouth's partnership with Fulbright University Vietnam, a new liberal arts university in Ho Chi Minh City.  During the fall term, faculty at Dartmouth and Fulbright each offer courses on Vietnamese Studies with similar learning goals and content.  During this time, students from the two universities work in joint Dartmouth-Fulbright teams to design a research project related to one of the topics they are studying.  The Vietnamese faculty and students are coming to the Dartmouth campus during this week in October to work with their teams in person. Then, during the December winterim period, the Dartmouth instructors and students will travel to Ho Chi Minh City for three weeks of intensive research collaboration and co-learning with their Fulbright counterparts.  During this time, the joint teams will conduct their field research and present their findings to their instructors and their peers.

  • 2nd poster for film On Healing Land Birds Perch
  • poster for film On Healing Land Birds Perch
  • image of Naja Pham Lockwood

    Film director Naja Pham Lockwood.

About the film:

ON HEALING LAND, BIRDS PERCH (Đất Lành, Chim Đậu) revisits one of the most iconic Pulitzer Prize–winning photographs of the Vietnam War to uncover the untold stories behind it. Through intimate testimonies from survivors on both sides, the film traces the war's lingering aftershocks, the harrowing journeys of refugees becoming new Americans, and the urgent parallels to today's displaced communities — offering a profound meditation on memory, resilience, and belonging.

Fifty years after the end of the Vietnam War, one image still defines how we remember it: the Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of General Nguyễn Ngọc Loan executing a Vietcong prisoner during the Tet Offensive. Reproduced and debated for decades, it has become an icon of America's most divisive war. But that single, frozen frame cannot hold the full story.

ON HEALING LAND, BIRDS PERCH steps beyond that frame. It brings together, for the first time, four people whose lives were forever shaped by the moment that photograph was captured: a child refugee who saw his entire family massacred and, against all odds who became the first Vietnamese American Rear Admiral in the U.S. Navy; the daughter of General Loan, who built a life in America while carrying her family's vilified legacy; and the two children of the executed Vietcong soldier, whose father's death became a symbol far larger than his life.

Together, these four voices form a triangle—a meeting of perspectives from opposite sides of a single event. The film creates a space where all three stories can breathe, revealing the complexity of trauma, survival, and, ultimately, healing.

This is a film about the Vietnam War. It is a film about America—its promise, its reckoning, and its capacity for renewal.

Director Biography:

Naja Phạm Lockwood has executive produced multiple documentary and narrative films focusing on social justice issues including TRY HARDER!, COMING HOME AGAN, GOOK and CRIES FROM SYRIA. In 2020, Naja produced 76 DAY directed by Hao Wu, revolving around the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. The film won a Peabody Award and a Primetime Emmy Award for Exceptional Merit in Documentary Filmmaking. Naja is the founder of RYSE Media Ventures, which supports stories of diverse voices. Through Impact Partners Films, Naja has financed the Academy Award winning documentary, ICARUS, as well as WON'T YOU BE MY NEIGHBOR and AUDRIE AND DAISY. She co-produced THE FIRST DAYS, which is a collaboration between StoryCorps and PBS's Academy Nominated LAST DAYS IN VIETNAM which aimed to collect, preserve and celebrate the stories of Vietnamese American refugees and Vietnam veterans throughout America.

Naja graduated with a BA from Boston University and an MBA from Harvard Business School. Born in Vietnam, Naja immigrated to Massachusetts during the Fall of Saigon. As a refugee, Naja continues to advocate for immigrants from her undergraduate years to her current work with the Governor's Workforce Services. She serves on the Committee for Ethnic Studies and Asian American Studies at Harvard University and The Coalition for Diverse Harvard. Throughout Naja's life, there has always been a commitment to social justice and making sure the voices of the under-represented, the minority and the oppressed are heard.