Last Tuesday at maelstrom things were set up a little differently then usual- bright lights on posts and cameras in the corner, and two people NOT dressed in black, circling the perimeter with photographic equipment, gracefully managing not to get hit by anything. Last week the class was filmed for “Resettled, Not Settled” a documentary featuring Brak, who trains at maelstrom, primarily in the empty hand and stick classes.
The documentary, by Holly Hoffman, tells Braks story, that of a 30-year-old man who has fled from an oppressed rural village in Central Vietnam and resettled in East Vancouver. Although Brak comes from Vietnam, he is not Vietnamese. Rather he belongs to an indigenous minority group known as the Montagnard, which has been at odds with the Vietnamese government for centuries. Brak left behind a life of persecution and the threat of imprisonment, but now faces a new oppression as he tries to re-build his life in this unfamiliar urban setting. Perhaps the greatest difficulty he faces, however, is that his wife and child are still in Vietnam and his fight to reunite with them has thus far been unsuccessful.
It was great to see part of the filming happen, and to help support getting the Braks story and the story of the Montagnard people out into the world.