Appocalips: On view at Pratt Institute through March 2nd

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.

View the trailer here.

Further reading & viewing:

• USA Today: My war refugee parents played extras in 'Apocalypse Now.' They star in my 'Appocalips.’

• BOMB Magazine: Interview with Ari-Duong Nguyen

• In the Gallery: Appocalips on Screen Slate

• We Are Cathy Linh Che and Christopher Radcliff | OPEN CALL 2023 | THE SHED

• Between Artists: Cathy Linh Che, Christopher Radcliff, & Sandy Williams IV

• In the Shadow of War by Rachel TonThat

• HUG Interview with Cathy Linh Che, Christopher Radcliff, & Jake Brush

• The Shed website