Bridging the Vietnamese and American Cultures : Movies: Filmmaker Quan Lelan strives to move beyond polarized hatred in his compassionate depictions of a passionate war.

An unassuming 30-year-old, Quan Lelan is among the first of his generation to explore the complexity and anguish of the Vietnamese-American psyche through film.

Like the characters in his movies, Lelan is a product of two worlds--wartime Vietnam and post-war America. It’s given him a perspective that is neither completely Vietnamese nor American.

“I see myself as a bridge between the two cultures,” said a quiet, bespectacled Lelan, who will graduate this year from the USC School of Cinema/Television. “A few years younger and I would be too American; a few years older and I would be too Vietnamese.”

His main body of work, completed while at USC, is made up of three short films that form a rough series, beginning with those who fought the war and continuing, years later, with those who survived it.

His most ambitious piece, “The Last of Alpha,” will premiere Wednesday at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences as part of a screening of USC student projects.

Lelan said that “Alpha,” the story of a squad of American soldiers on a doomed patrol, was an important personal project that allowed him to revisit a war that still permeates every aspect of his life.

“It is a door we must all go through,” he said. “To understand the Vietnamese experience, I have to go back through the war again.”

But the subjects that are closest to Lelan’s heart are the Americans and Vietnamese who survived the war and now grapple with its legacy.

His most recent film, “The Killing Zone,” is the story of a Vietnamese-American waitress and an ex-GI who unexpectedly encounter a North Vietnamese soldier in a bakery one night.

At an informal screening this year in a popular Vietnamese nightclub in Anaheim, a crowd of Vietnamese-Americans was transfixed by the film’s message of forgiveness, which still touches raw nerves 18 years after the end of the war.

“They were dazzled by ‘Alpha,’ but they really identified with ‘The Killing Zone’ because it was a film about themselves,” he said. “They have never seen that before.”

For Lelan, making films has been a journey as unexpected as the tumult that transformed his life after the fall of Saigon.

As the youngest son of a wealthy Saigon businessman, his childhood was one of privilege among the elite.

Although he grew up during the height of the war, his memories of it are vague and distant--the muffled sound of artillery fire as he slept at night, troops of soldiers walking the streets, the fear on the faces of adults during an attack on the city.

Mostly, his memories of childhood revolve around going to school, daydreaming, sketching cartoons and spending time with his family.

“When you grow up in a war, it is hard to understand,” he said. “It all becomes natural to you.”

The family’s life was turned upside-down as the communist forces closed in on Saigon in April, 1975.

In a mad rush, the family escaped the day before the city fell. They heard about the fall of Saigon while waiting in a tent city on Guam.

After several months, they were settled in San Diego under the sponsorship of a distant relative.

Lelan said his family was devastated by the flight to a new country. His mother worked at a dry cleaners, his father jumped from job to job, unable to find anything permanent.

Lelan, however, was fascinated with the United States. “It was a new life,” he said. “I was kind of eager to find out about things.”

At UC San Diego, he majored in engineering, following the course of thousands of other refugee children, eager to find a stable niche in this new country.

But he was unhappy through much of his college years and shifted his major to art. After several years as a painter, Lelan applied to the USC film school, where he believed he could pursue both his interest in the visual arts and storytelling through the medium of film.

One of his first projects was “Hill 66,” the story of two American soldiers behind enemy lines. It has been shown at Asian-American film festivals in New York, Hawaii and Washington.

In his second year at USC, he drafted another script on the Vietnam War that eventually became “The Last of Alpha.”

“Alpha” follows the path of five American soldiers who are trapped by a Viet Cong sniper. As the soldiers are shot one by one, the squad leader circles behind and kills the sniper--a young boy. Only three of the soldiers survive. One is desperately wounded.

The squad leader calls for a helicopter, but his request is denied. The wounded man pleads to be put out of his misery. The squad leader finally agrees, not knowing that a helicopter has been diverted to help them.

As the squad leader hears the sound of the helicopter approaching, the screen is filled with his face and clouds of red landing smoke.

Lelan said that in his vision of war, there are no evil characters, no sermons of right or wrong, no political diatribes on the communist or capitalist threat.

The American soldiers are tragic characters in a play of which they have no understanding. They are doomed despite their best intentions and thoughts.

The sniper, Lelan said, is portrayed as simply a child, who despite the gun, is still a child.

“What comes across is not adult determination,” he said. “The war has become a part of his life. It is not a political cause, just his childhood.”

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After completing “Alpha,” Lelan began work on “The Killing Zone,” which cost him about $900 to make.

Many of his Vietnamese friends urged him to abandon the film, saying that the topic was too sensitive.

But he forged ahead, believing that his perspective as a Vietnamese-American, free of the emotional baggage of the older generation, would allow him to move beyond the polarized hatreds that have sometimes come to define the Vietnamese community.

“People feel strongly about the war and for good reason,” he said. “If you have spent your life fighting for something and lost it all, you cannot just turn away.”

“The Killing Zone” is set in a tiny Vietnamese bakery in Orange County’s Little Saigon. One night, an old man enters to buy a dessert for his granddaughter.

He talks briefly with the Vietnamese waitress and exchanges glances with another man, a former U.S soldier. The soldier recognizes the man as a North Vietnamese soldier whose unit ambushed his squad 20 years earlier.

He pulls a knife. The man argues that he was a farmer in Vietnam. To resolve the dispute, the American soldier demands that the old man cut a deck of cards, high card wins.

They tie on the first draw. As the soldier reaches to draw another card, the old man runs for the door, but is caught. He pleads that the war is over.

As they face each other, the waitress suddenly points a gun at both. She slowly turns the weapon on the old man. “He is not getting away,” she says.

As she prepares to shoot, the old man’s granddaughter enters the bakery. Moved by the sight of the little girl, the waitress lowers her weapon and allows the man to leave.

Together, the waitress and the soldier place the unturned card back into the deck.

“Forgiveness is something too dear for most people,” Lelan said. “But for the future, we can’t hold the grudges forever.”

At the movie’s screening in Little Saigon, he was startled when the audience applauded after the waitress let the old man go. At the end of the film, as the camera focused on the unturned card, some in the audience began yelling, “Ace! Ace!”

When the card was placed back in the deck, they began applauding again, Lelan said. “That was a very gratifying reaction,” he said.

Lelan has already begun work on his next project, a suspense-thriller titled “Echo of Fire” about an Amerasian girl searching for her father.

“ ‘Alpha’ was about the generation that fought the war, ‘The Killing Zone’ was about those who survived the war and now, ‘Echo of Fire’ is about the generation that has grown up in America,” he said. “There are so many stories to tell, and no one has told them.”