The Place Where We Were Born

Leaving is not the same as forgetting…

When does experience end? When does reflection begin? Until a people can reflect on where they’ve come from, they will spend all of time searching for where they are.

This is the Hmong refugee experience, reflected and refracted in the scope of a lyric documentary by Kao Kalia Yang, writer, and John O’Brien, filmmaker. Funded by the MN State Arts Board and sponsored by the Center for Hmong Studies, this work is dedicated to the Hmong people who lived in the camp. Ban Vinai Refugee Camp, like camps the world over, was never meant to last. But in the memories of those who lived there, those who loved there, those who belonged there: the camps will always be.