Migratory Cuisine

Migratory Cuisine

Vietnamese-French Filmmaker San Yvin Explores the Untold Realities of Immigrant Restauranteurs

By Bernice delos Reyes・September 28, 2020・6 minutes

As a young boy living in his parents’ restaurant, Vietnamese-French filmmaker San Yvin formed bonds with restaurant staff whose lives would later influence his artistic practice. “I was really close to an old lady who took care of the groceries,” Yvin fondly remembers. “We would go to the market together and I would always tag along. She and I were inseparable. I even had sleepovers at her house when my parents were too busy.” Yvin captures this relationship in his short film, Flystruck, in which the narrative is centered around the protagonist’s bond with the son of his restauranteur boss, sharing the realities of immigrant restauranteurs.

Flystruck hones in on the economic and social struggles of a young immigrant while exploring often romanticized spaces in New York in the midst of chaos and poverty. Yvin himself grew up living above the restaurant his restauranteur parents owned serving French-Vietnamese fusion cuisine. “The smells of huge pots marinating beef bones, onions, coriander, and anise flooded the hallways that led to the kitchen… [the] chaotic noises [of clunking metal and screaming cooks] from the kitchen were as loud as the crowd in the dining room, [where we served our customers],” recalls Yvin of his childhood home. This experience in his youth, he shares, is what drew him to document life in New York’s Chinatown. As a teenager, he traveled from Hanoi to New York City to pursue a career in film, where he developed his artistic work, underscored by his transnational, migratory identity.

With his roots deeply anchored in the restaurant industry, Yvin aspires to capture the narratives of its often-untraceable members through his films. “The people I grew up around were incredibly influential to my childhood and I want to tell their stories…there are too many stories out there to be told; the best place [for me] to start was to tell the ones I knew.”

Yvin, a recent graduate of New York University’s Film Program, explores the narratives of this community further through his film, “In the Blue,” which highlights the dreams and imagination of a boy who yearns to see the Chinese dragon dancers in the streets of Chinatown. Instead, the boy is tucked in bed by his mother before she returns to serve their buzzing restaurant during Chinese New Year underneath the boy’s room. The film goes into the boy’s dream of dancing with the dragons in his sleep, showing the boy’s deep desire to see them in real life someday.

The surreal nature of this film captures Yvin’s experience of ‘sensory overload’ as a resident of Hanoi’s Viet-French restaurants. With a Vietnamese mother and a French father who served and cooked in restaurants in Hanoi, Yvin stands at the intersection of cultures where he found himself forming a complex, interwoven identity through his interactions both with the staff and guests. “I knew the people who cooked the meals and ate with the people who paid for them… [the collection of people in these restaurants were] the most diverse there was in Hanoi.”

Now navigating his way through the New York film industry, Yvin finds home in New York’s bustle and chaos as it mimics his first home. The co-existence of diverse narratives and identities in New York and the potential it gives to express fluid identities without societal boundaries became a gateway for Yvin to find inspiration as an emerging artist.

“New York is chaotic in every sense, just like Hanoi: [with the] loud noises, incessant amount of people [and] the strong smells you pick up in the streets. I found comfort in New York [and its diversity] ... I felt at home in this new big city because [I felt like] anyone could belong in New York.”

As he continues to develop his artistry as a young multicultural migrant artist, Yvin hopes to use his craft to illustrate stories that reflect real life. “Dishwashers at the back of restaurants, servers, blue-collar workers, and [everyone] in between have too much to say to be shunned away from the screen.” ❖

Watch Flystruck, In the Blue, and San Yvin’s other work on sanyvin.com.