This series has only been published in Vietnam for about ten years now under the auspices of the Finnish embassy. It is quite popular among Saigonese young people.

Viewed on its own merits, it is perhaps a nice debut film, though certainly not as polished as Zyablikova's later films of the 1980s (and too much aimed at younger kids to the exclusion of adults, while the original book can be loved at any age). However... I watched this recently right after reading the book for the first time, and I found it to be an enormous disappointment. I enjoyed the book immensely. But here, too many changes seemed to be made simply for the purpose of shifting things around, and it seemed more like a pale imitation than a valid reinterpretation into a different medium. Which is unfortunate - I wanted to like this, but couldn't.

The transformation of Vietnamese language through word "Heaven" : Thiên 天 (classical times) → Blời (XVIII century) → Giời (XIX century) → Trời (XX century).

【Noname lullaby by Á-nam Trần-tuấn-Khải, 1921】

Let us sightsee the Sword Lake scene together,
With the Bridge of "the Rising and Perching Sun" and the Temple of "the Gem Mountain".
The Ink Slab and the Pen Tower is not worn yet,
Ask, who built this "Mountain and Lake" (land + water = country) ?

Rủ nhau xem cảnh Kiếm Hồ,
Xem cầu Thê Húc, xem chùa Ngọc Sơn.
Đài Nghiên, tháp Bút chưa mòn,
Hỏi ai xây dựng nên non nước này ?

【Langue indigène, 1926】

1. Lê-Lai rescues his lord

Lê-Lợi at that time in Chi-linh mountain was surrounded by Chinese troops ; the enemy was about to defeat the fort, so the King was in danger of being killed. He asked his general that : "Who dares to break the siege and fight the enemy on my behalf ? That man will of course be captured by the enemy, but I take advantage of their retreat, so I will recruit more troops and gather together to plot revenge. Lê-Lai the youngman took it. He wore a robe, then rode an elephant out of the fort, and called himself "Prince of Pacify" which was the title of King Lê-Lợi at that time. Ming army thought him as the real King Lê-Lợi, so they gathered to arrest and kill him. General Lê-Lai risked his life like that to save King Lê-Lợi from an accident, so that our country could gain self-control, from being oppressed by the Chinese army.

a. Ông Lê-Lai liều mình cứu chúa

Lê-Lợi bấy giờ ở Chí-linh bị quân Tàu vây riết lắm ; quân giặc sắp hạ được đồn, vua Lê tất bị giết. Vua mới hỏi tướng-tá rằng : "Ai dám thay trẫm ra phá vòng vây, đánh nhau với giặc ? Người ấy sẽ bị giặc bắt, còn trẫm thì nhân lúc giặc lui, mộ thêm quân, họp binh lại, mưu sự báo thù”. Ông Lê-Lai ra nhận việc ấy. Ông mặc áo ngự-bào, cưỡi voi ra ngoài đồn, tự xưng là “Bình-định vương” là hiệu vua Lê-Lợi bấy giờ. Quân nhà Minh tưởng là vua Lê-Lợi thực, xúm nhau lại bắt ông giết đi. Ông Lê-Lai liều mình như thế thành ra cứu được vua Lê-Lợi thoát nạn, mà nhân đó nước ta mới được tự chủ, khỏi phải quân Tàu áp chế.

2. Story about the magic sword of King Lê-Lợi

Legend has it that King Lê-Lợi, before he rose to fight the Ming army, was still in Hanoi working as a fisherman. One day he threw his net into Hoàn-kiếm Lake, then called Tả-vọng Lake ("Lake of the Left Looking"), when he pulled it up, he could not catch any fish, but he got a very beautiful sword with a wide, hard, and shiny blade. He got that sword, so rose up to fight the Chinese army, chased it out of the country, then he was crowned the king in Thang-long ("the Rising Dragon", at that time Hanoi). One day he was playing in a boat on the lake : He saw a big turtle emerging, swimming close to him. He was afraid, took his sword away, but the tortoise grabbed the sword and disappeared. He then knew that the turtle was the lake god who helped him fight the Chinese. After that, people built in the middle of the lake a tower called "Quy-sơn tower" (Tower of the Tortoise Hill), and that lake was called "Hoàn-kiếm lake" (Lake of the Returned Sword).

b. Truyện gươm thần của vua Lê-Lợi

Tục truyền rằng vua Lê-Lợi, trước khi nổi lên đánh quân Minh, vẫn ở Hà-nội làm nghề đánh cá. Một hôm ngài quăng lưới xuống hồ Hoàn–kiếm, bấy giờ còn gọi là hồ Tả-vọng, lúc kéo lên không được cá, lại được một thanh gươm rất đẹp lưỡi rộng, cứng mà sáng loáng. Ngài được thanh gươm ấy, nổi lên đánh quân Tàu, đuổi ra ngoài nước, rồi lên ngôi vua ở Thăng-long (Hà–nội bấy giờ). Một hôm ngài ngự thuyền chơi trên hồ : Ngài thấy có một con rùa to nổi lên, bơi lại gần ngài. Ngài sợ, lấy gươm gạt ra, nhưng con rùa ấy đớp lấy gươm rồi biến mất. Ngài bấy giờ mới biết rằng con rùa ấy là vị thần hồ đã giúp ngài đánh quân Tàu. Sau người ta xây ở giữa hồ một cái tháp gọi là “Quy-sơn tháp” (tháp Núi-rùa), còn cái hồ ấy thì gọi là “Hoàn-kiếm hồ” (hồ Giả-gươm).

Thanks for the history, Cynir!
I think that these films from the 1920s are interesting in that they show what was happening at the time. Unfortunately, most of the Soviet animation from before 1936 or so has been lost, as a lot of animation studios were dismantled in that year (replaced by Soyuzmultfilm) and their film collections not preserved. A lot of things were destroyed because of WW2, also.

This film recalled some of the low-pitched melodies of my country. In the past, the cooperative movement (phong trào hợp tác xã) destroyed the rural structure of North Vietnam (where the majority were farmers) : Lazy persons were counted as laborers, so their productivity was so low that they had to ask for international aid (so the world used to liken Vietnam as a beggar) ; fields as well as agricultural tools are considered common property, so no one cares, even buffalo and cows (that is, animals were used to plow the land) were injured by farmers to easily become the foods ; even cooperatives also suddenly became the new exploitative regime with new landowners whom were called as "cooperative officers" (cán bộ hợp tác xã). These officers usually did not have to work on the fields, but only score points and make statistics on agricultural tools, so they rely on their authority to do hard work by undercutting the already small amount of agricultural products to share each other.

After the reunification of Vietnam (1975), the North partly benefited from the rich agriculture of the South (where the capitalist economy developed in the XIX century and was once one of the most prosperous countries in Asia). However, this situation lasted only three years. Since 1977, the communist government has implemented a policy of "beating the commercial bourgeoisie and eliminating depraved cultural products" (đánh tư sản mại bản và bài trừ văn hóa phẩm đồi trụy). Not to mention, 16 tons of gold reserves of the government of the former Republic of Vietnam were put on a plane to be transported to Moskva to pay the war debt (This event was only confirmed by some historians and former intelligence officer Frank Warren Snepp ten years ago, but before that, folks still believed that the late President Nguyễn-văn-Thiệu had sent it to Swiss banks as his own). Anyway, for about ten years before the Đổi-Mới decree (Renovation Policy), there was almost nothing in Vietnam's industry. So much so that many families encouraged their children to study well in order to study in socialist countries (according to cooperation agreements), even bribed to go to work abroad. They would go to "brotherly socialist" countries to buy industrial products such as irons, pressure cookers, motorbikes... and sent them back to Vietnam for their relatives to sell for a profit. That is why at that time there was a saying "Go to the Soviet Union to win the lottery" (đi Liên Xô trúng xổ số) to talk about luck if you leave the country. Of course, there are also thousands of lives lost at sea when they had to take the illegal route. These people have to bribe the police (with many golds and dollars) to get on a boat going out to sea, which was just tattered fishing boats that are hard to resist the waves. Even lots of other persons are prey for Thai and Malay pirates. So this is a very bitter period in my country's history !

However, it is not over yet ! In recent years, the people's credit fund (quỹ tín dụng nhân dân) continues to become a machine that drains the workers and farmers' wallets. As I am writing these lines, dozens of Vietnam's largest banks are still being investigated or are about to be prosecuted for their black behavior : They mobilize a huge number of collaborators (mobile personnels or PGs) taking advantage of the development of telecommunications technology (imagine as Iphone, Ipad or laptop) to broker people for buying bonds or borrowing interest at banks. However, at first, it is still the same as in the contract, but then the bank continuously informs that the customer has violated A or B for a penalty (which is in fact appropriated more money), in the end the customer will losing both capital and interest but still not paying off debt. There have been thousands of cases where they had to complain because they suddenly saw that their accounts were reported to be owed tens of billions of Vietnamese dongs. So second, one fine day, the bank's information system reported an error, then the customer's account was deleted and the contract was considered non-existent. How should this problem be understood ? A certain employee of the bank (who may be just a manequin to cover up for the boss) broke in and robbed the customer's money. There are many other unnamed cases, but in general, Vietnamese banks only attribute to personal problems or random situations, but they never acknowledge systematic robbery. Therefore, for many years now, the banking groups from my country has been considered one of the most dangerous places to store money in the world.

>>2
I'm glad you could finally see it! Cynir was the one who found it, actually - it's been on the site since April. But it only just appeared on the main page since I only just now translated it (even though I still can't make out a few lines). There are some other interesting videos on that Youtube channel that I've been adding to the site, with my favourite so far being a nice copy of the 1948 The Hunting Rifle, though the colour versions of 1938's Ivashko and Baba-Yaga and Puss in Boots were also really nice.

The "holy grail" as far as I'm concerned now would be the colour version of the 1943 Tale of Tsar Saltan. As far as I can tell, it seems to be done and premiered at the "Belyye stolby" film festival in 2020, but it hasn't been seen anywhere since. I think it's actually quite a good film and it would be a real treasure if that could be seen.

Great find, Niffiwan, I've been looking for this animation of years, ever since I saw it had been restaurated!

Here is the original story of the film : Kaķīša Dzirņavas. This work seems to be very popular, and besides, it is based on a group of old religious legends in the Baltic countries.

Though this has its charms (escaping from the wolf's belly with scissors is... novel), I prefer the 1950s animated adaptation. I also think that Sarra Mokil's earlier puppet films were better (she apparently made one more after this, but it doesn't seem to be online anywhere).