This article is part of Concentrate's Voices of Youth series, which features stories written by Washtenaw County youth with guidance from Concentrate staff mentors. In this installment, student writer Ella Yip interviews filmmaker Elizabeth Ai about her documentary exploring the connection between Vietnamese Americans and '80s new wave music.

When filmmaker Elizabeth Ai’s voice enters the scene, so does intrigue, as the audience experiences a powerful retelling of the Vietnam War, accompanied with photographs and footage from the first-of-its-kind televised conflict. The audience sees a screen full of tanks rolling by, contrasted against boats full of families and children fleeing the violence. From here, the history sewn into Ai's documentary film "New Wave" is free to unfold — showing us three Vietnamese Americans all knotted together in both the historical experience and the coping that followed. Enter our main character, new wave — or "Eurodisco misfiled" — a musical genre that Vietnamese communities in the '80s claimed as their own, and the namesake of Ai's film.

"New Wave" is the spade with which the story of these young Vietnamese immigrants is dug up. The independently produced documentary has circulated through showings across the U.S., including a screening at the University of Michigan Museum of Art in Ann Arbor earlier this year.

In the '80s, many Vietnamese teens found themselves transplanted into a brand new environment. There, the trauma of the war was impacting their families and parents. In search of stability, they turned to music. Communities were formed, and weekends and days spent with groups of people emerged as a new culture, shaping the next generation of Vietnamese Americans.

New wave refers to the '80s genre of music sandwiched between punk rock and synth pop, but for the concentration of Vietnamese migrants in California, it was so much more. In a way, a new genre was created, and with it came a whole new source of expression. Popular songs in Eurodisco were translated to English and Vietnamese, catering to a new audience. New trends and identities were born in response. Young people flocked to the music, as testified to in the film, and a space was carved out.

In the film, this story is driven by a new wave musician from the '80s known as Lynda Trang Dai, a DJ today whose love of music stems from new wave immersion, and Ai, recounting her own personal experiences. Over the course of several years, Ai collected stories, starting from the genre's birth, and covering the impact it had on youth communities. 

Although the film is centered on Southern California in the 1980s, Ai says it has connected with audiences around the country, particularly with first- and second-generation immigrants from Southeast Asia.

"The most meaningful responses have often come from within our Southeast Asian diasporic communities," Ai says. "Sharing space to dialogue and affirm our living realities — displacement, fractured families, the heavy silences we've carried — has been affirming in ways I didn’t even realize I needed."

Locally, the film was also well received, as it connected to the Asian and Asian-American community and youth.

"I thought the film was really interesting and shed light on a facet of Asian American identity I wasn't aware of before," says Niska Kalantry, a student at Ann Arbor's Huron High School. "It really showed how some experiences are not just limited to one generation, but that’s because of how past experiences have shaped a demographic as a whole."

"Films like 'New Wave' broaden people's minds, as well as affirm the experiences of those who see themselves on screen," Kalantry says. 

Over the course of the film, Ai brings the audience into a "then and now" sequence blended with a new wave soundtrack that drives the story. Important themes of family and community reliance recur throughout the film. We see Ai reach out to her mother, initially a distant figure, and the singular support for her newly immigrated family. As the film progresses, so does Ai's contact with her mother. The final scenes show Ai, her daughter, and her mother — three generations of Vietnamese women — crossing generational damage to repair familial bonds.

"This film brought to the Ann Arbor community how important having family, whether that's family you find later in life or family you're born with, is to fulfill yourself," Kalantry says. "It was necessary to share, because, oftentimes, people can isolate themselves or come up with this illusion or idea in their mind that they can't truly connect with their family, or even put themselves out there and be vulnerable and try and find family themselves." 

Family as a generational structure that lasts the test of time and the importance of healing are two other messages in the film that resonated with Kalantry.

"'New Wave' shows that it's never too late to try and find those connections or rekindle them," Kalantry says.

The raw and honest experience of reconnection portrayed in the documentary has resonated with viewers of all ages.

"Audiences have shared how much they recognized themselves or their families in the quiet emotional currents of the film," Ai says. "After screenings, I’ve had conversations where people, young and old, tell me they saw feelings and conditions on screen that they had never been able to name before [including] grief, neglect as abuse, undiagnosed PTSD, etc. It’s been deeply humbling to witness how personal the film becomes for viewers."

Ai says she's "continually struck" by how 'New Wave' connects with younger audiences.

"Youth today are incredibly fluent in talking about mental health, generational trauma, and emotional complexity, often more so than older generations," Ai says. "I think they connect to the idea that 'rebuilding' isn’t just about material success or assimilation; it’s about reconstructing emotional landscapes that were fractured by war, migration, and survival."

As "New Wave" continues to tour large and small communities, Ai hopes it will bridge class, race, and ethnic divides to connect with all viewers, even if they cannot directly relate to the experiences depicted in the film. 

"What I hope the film offers to broader audiences is this: The emotional currents we carry, the ones we rarely speak aloud, are universal," Ai says. "The act of remembering, feeling, and giving shape to those silent inheritances can open a path toward both individual and collective healing." 

Ella Yip is a rising senior at Huron High School in Ann Arbor.

Concentrate staffer Eric Gallippo served as Ella's mentor on this project.