On this day in 1930, 50 Vietnamese soldiers of the French colonial army mutinied, attempting to take control of the Yên Bái garrison and begin a war of independence against the French. The uprising failed and many of its leaders were executed.
The revolt was planned in advance by the Việt Nam Quốc Dân Đảng (VNQDD), a socialist party founded by Nguyễn Thái Học that sought independence from France. The VNQDD had previously attempted to engage in clandestine activities to undermine French rule, but increasing state scrutiny on their activities led to their leadership risking a large scale military attack in the Red River Delta in northern Vietnam.
Multiple uprisings were planned throughout the region, with VNQDD members taking command of forces with specific strategic missions. The uprisings were supposed to be simultaneous, but matters were complicated when a messenger carrying an order from Học to delay the uprising until the 15th was arrested.
Early in the morning of February 10th, 1930, ~50 Vietnamese soldiers stationed at Yên Bái attacked their 29 French officers, aided by 60 civilian members of the VNQDD. Although the French were caught off guard and several officers were killed, the majority of the soldiers present remained loyal to the colonial army and helped suppress the uprising. Three Vietnamese sergeants were awarded the Médaille militaire for their efforts.
Later than evening, another planned VNQDD revolt in the rural district of Sơn Dương was also suppressed. Although insurgents initially succeeded, raising the VNQDD flag over the town, at sunrise they were routed by the colonial army.
The French retaliation was swift and brutal. When VNQDD forces fled into the village of Co Am, the French bombed the entire settlement, killing 200 people, mostly civilians. This was the first time that military air power had been used in Indochina.
In France, the severity of the sentences led to a campaign of solidarity by the French Communist Party and various demonstrations by Vietnamese expatriates. On May 22nd, 1930, more than 1,000 demonstrated outside Élysée Palace against the French reaction to Yên Bái. The police arrested 47 people, deporting 17 back to Vietnam, where most of them engaged in communist anti-colonial activities.
In total, 547 individuals, both soldiers and civilians, were prosecuted for their role in the uprising. Thirty-nine of the surviving leaders of the VNQDD were sentenced to death, although some of these were later granted clemency. Học, along with twelve others, was guillotined on June 17th, 1930. The thirteen shouted "Vietnam!" in unison before being executed.
The subsequent French military and civilian crackdown saw military security increase and the VNQDĐ's ability to threaten French authority in Vietnam was extinguished. The vast majority of the leadership were killed or sentenced to death, and the remnants of the VNQDĐ fled to China, where several factions emerged under disparate leadership.
In the long run, Yên Bái allowed the Indochinese Communist Party of Ho Chi Minh to inherit the VNQDĐ's status as the leading anti-colonial revolutionary movement. After the Second World War, an opportunity to fight for Vietnamese independence arose, and this allowed the communists in the Viet Minh to dictate the platform of the independence movement. As a result, the communists were able to position themselves to become the dominant force in Vietnam post-independence.
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Watched Grizzly Man recently and the choice in final shots stuck with me in an odd way, basically its kind of the same shot in a lot of ways, separated by some unrelated footage.
First shot shows Timothy Treadwell, the guy the documentary is about, walking across an open field shadowed by a couple of playful looking foxes, going away from a fixed tripod camera, while the second shot is of Treadwell already in the distance, on a stream, with two big bears between him and the camera, and he starts walking away while the bears follow sorta lazily.
And it just felt a bit strange that the two shots are so similar, and I keep thinking about what the sorta purpose is, both shots are obviously stunning, and the latter has the very literal symbolism of Tim walking away from this world, flanked by two bears(after his death by a bear mauling and eating him, that bear and one other was shot in the process of recovering his remains.) The first shot feels almost comically idyllic, like a fairytale character in living flesh walking around with his sidekicks, which I guess is probably how he would have wanted to be seen.
And the second is also very idyllic, and showing him with the bears feels like kind of a moment of empathy on Herzogs part, making a memorial of him, but it also sort of feels like it invites a final bit of scrutiny or questioning on the part of the audience, the bears following behind Treadwell can be seen many ways, you have the kind of symbolic and spiritual thing that he would have liked, but then theres also a question of why they follow behind, if its just animal curiosity and such, and then theres also just the obvious feeling that it looks like they are stalking him.
Idk just wanted to blurt out some of my thoughts about it, the whole film is very interesting but that choice in ending stuck with me very specifically, Im not 100% sure its just meant as juxtaposition, or even if it is meant like that, but it doesnt feel like it would entirely just be a memorial either, to leave the film off with the exact images that Timothy Treadwell himself would have wished to be seen like.
I do not like "man goes in to Alaska bush, does specific thing we tell people not to do in the Alaska bush, dies predictably, was he a prophet or a madman?" Movies. Hundreds of thousands of Alaskans spend their whole lives not being eaten by bears. Make a movie about them, not the "i didn't respect the bears and they very predictably ate me (and then were shot bc my bones were more important than the bear's lives apparently)
tbf to Grizzly Man in this regard, the only people who are on the prophet side of things are his ex and probable ex who helped run his weird grizzly bear awareness shit(and who actually had the rights to his film material), everyone else is pretty much unanimous in that he was acting with gross disregard for his own safety, the safety of the women he apparently repeatedly took with him on his "expeditions"(one of which died alongside him), the safety of everyone else who visits the area, as well as the safety of the bears themselves.
The rest of the film I guess is more of an observation of the strange mix of artificiality and nature in how the guy presented himself, doing repeated takes of supposedly unscripted monologues, setting up tripods to do travel shots, flat out lying about his girlfriend being with him during large parts of the expedition, shit like that.