Cathy Linh Che & Christopher Radcliff

Cathy Linh Che and Christopher Radcliff’s Appocalips is a three-channel video installation about Che’s parents, who while stateless in a refugee camp in 1976, were hired to play extras in Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979). The piece explores their surprising, sometimes humorous, sometimes heartbreaking narrative of escaping from Vietnam, participating in the production of the film, and subsequently immigrating to the United States. In centering perspectives historically erased from the master narrative, Che and Radcliff’s film asks questions about power, representation, place, and memory. Given the absence of video-documented, first-person accounts from extras of Apocalypse Now, this work tells a rare and urgent story.