Vietnam: Picking Up the Pieces

Vietnam: Picking Up the Pieces Synopsis

Jon Alpert and Keiko Tsuno made headlines with a 1977 journalistic coup, when they became the first American television crew allowed back into Vietnam after the U.S. withdrawal and were given unprecedented access to the ruined countryside and its people. The resulting "up-close" study of Vietnam's grim postwar reality relies on the voices of the common people to tell their stories: a 14-year-old prostitute, war orphans, an American translator turned opium addict. Traveling through North and South Vietnam, Alpert and Tsuno elicit memories of the war and reveal its scars in a compelling, first-hand indictment of the United States' role in the country's devastation. This history-making document describes the painful process of transition for the people living in the "New Vietnam."