Script for Long Bien Bridge Festival 2010

According to the organizing board, the festival theme will be “Dragon Bridge tells the story of 1000 years. The four-day event (Oct. 6-9) will consist of four stages.
Chief organizer, Nguyen Nga, a French-Vietnamese, said on the first day, local people will be encouraged to wear makeup and dress up to tell their stories through their costumes.
The second day will be for the memory of the Vietnam People’s Army. Local people can wear clothes in the style of days gone by.
Oct. 8 will be the day for the young generation and young people’s activities.
The last day will be the day of Vietnam and the world. People will wear traditional costumes of 54 ethnic groups in Vietnam while foreigners will wear their traditional outfits to join the festival.
Long Bien bridge will be divided into 10 sections to symbolize 10 centuries. When participants go through the bridge, it will symbolize passing through the memories of ten centuries. The country’s memories will be shown through various documents, objects and art performances.
Two months before the festival, an event will be held in Paris. This will be an art display and concert entitled “Vietnamese dragon, culture of a thousand years." A Vietnamese dragon 145 m long, a combination of contemporary art, sound and light, will be built near the l’Arc de Triomphe.
Vietnamese artists will perform Hue royal court music, ca tru and quan ho alongside the band Urban Sax at the foot of the dragon for five days. After that, the dragon will be brought to Vietnam.
The most important activity will be a music and art show on a big dragon-fairy boat traveling from the ancient capital of Hoa Lu (Ninh Binh province) to Hanoi and Ha Long (Quang Ninh). The boat will carry 100 Vietnamese artists and the Urban Sax band.
At the same time, another boat will carry Buddhist monks from the Hung Kings Temple in Phu Tho to the Long Bien bridge. The two boats will meet each other at the bridge on Oct. 9 in the closing ceremony, which will be supported by fireworks. The two boats will go to Ha Long bay in the morning of Oct. 10. The journey will close with a gala on Oct. 17 in Ha Long.
Nga estimated that she needs over 30 billion dong (around $1.6 million) to turn this script into reality. She hopes to raise one third from Hanoi government and the remaining amount from sponsors.
“I will call for the people’s contribution to this event by sending text messages by cell phones," Nga said. "Each message is worth only 1000 dong. This is a festival for the people. The only problem is funding."
Should Long Bien bridge become a tourist attraction?
People’s Artist stage director Le Hung, who will be responsible for arranging this year’s Long Bien Bridge Festival, talked about the festival.
Le Hung said: it is good to turn the Long Bien bridge into a bridge for tourism, because it will benefit Hanoians very much. The creator of Long Bien bridge is also the father of the Freedom Goddess statue and Eiffel tower. These two works are world-famous tourist attractions, so why we can’t turn Long Bien bridge into a bridge for tourism? Long Bien Bridge Festival is initiated for that goal, so I agreed to be the general director of this event.
The script of Long Bien Bridge Festival 2010 is very grand, but is it feasible?
Why not? If we can do it, the world will know about us. If we can invite Urban Sax band to Vietnam, international TV channels will go to Vietnam to report. At that time the image of Vietnam will be known worldwide. But we need at least $1 million to get that band to Vietnam.
How about the four-day festival on the bridge? Are you impractical to expect the people to become street artists?
We must find the way. We must have catalysts and materials to fill in gaps by performances of professional artists. We can invite a person who has deep knowledge about and is closely attached to Long Bien bridge to tell his or her story about the bridge. I think it will not be difficult. We can arrange his or her story. Vietnamese people are very intelligent, but they are not open. We only need to help them overcome the threshold of inferiority complex, and they will be very enthusiastic because the bridge represents their memories and their lives.
Did you attend Long Bien Bridge Festival last year?
No.
Many people were not satisfied with last year’s festival. Do you feel any pressure to arrange this year’s event?
No, not at all. Last year’s failure will be the mother of this year’s success.