C-SPAN Program Takes a Lengthy Look at Vietnam : Television: ‘Vietnam Revisited’ is done in cable channel’s ‘signature video <i> verite</i> ‘ style. ‘This is the most anyone has seen of Vietnam since the war,’ says channel’s founder.

Undertaking one of its most ambitious original programming efforts, the C-SPAN cable network will air 32 hours of programming on Vietnam throughout this Memorial Day weekend.

C-SPAN calls “Vietnam Revisited” a video journey from Hanoi to the Mekong Delta 17 years after the Vietnam War and the fall of Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City). It was shot in what C-SPAN calls its “signature video verite “ style, at a cost of $35,000.

“This is the most anyone has seen of Vietnam since the war,” said Brian Lamb, C-SPAN’s founder and chairman, who traveled to Vietnam in April with a four-person production crew.

“Our main objective was to be the eyes and ears of our viewers and to take a look at Vietnam today,” Lamb said. “Video verite is a form we developed several years ago. It’s a chance for people to see some aspect of life in long form. People who watch this will see almost everything we saw, most of it without a lot of commentary.”

The programming will be spread over four days. Two-thirds of what viewers will see was taped by Lamb and his crew in Vietnam. The remainder will be live segments and interviews that were taped in recent days in C-SPAN’s Washington studios.

In one taped segment, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a former Navy pilot who spent 5 1/2 years as a North Vietnam prisoner after being shot down over Hanoi, watches tape of a C-SPAN camera panning what was once his cell in a Hanoi prison nicknamed “the plantation”--a former film studio that is still used to make Army propaganda films. “I hold no bitterness,” said McCain, who visited Vietnam last year.

“Vietnam Revisited” begins Saturday (9 a.m. to 3 p.m.) with an historical overview of Vietnamese society and politics, including a tour of the War Museum and Ho Chi Minh Memorial and interviews with Vietnamese officials.

On Sunday (9 a.m. to 3 p.m.), it moves to life in Vietnam today, including interviews, a tour of the Amerasian center and discussions with American students. Monday’s programming (from 5 a.m. to 9 p.m.) will focus on a recent visit by the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs to Hanoi, the Mekong Delta and Danang. And there is an interview with Hanoi Hannah, who broadcast to the U.S troops in English from Radio Vietnam in Hanoi as the propaganda voice of the communist government. (She says that her son is an artist living in San Francisco.)

Vietnam veteran C. Fred Downs, author of “No Longer Enemies, No Longer Friends,” who is director of the Prosthetic and Sensory Aids Service at the Veterans Administration, will join Lamb for Monday’s broadcast, which will include live segments from the Vietnam Memorial.

Tuesday’s programming (5 a.m. to 9 a.m.) will include live interviews with Sens. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) and Bob Smith (R-N.H.), Vietnam vets and members of the Senate Select Committee who traveled to Vietnam.

The idea for the programming began months ago when C-SPAN Capitol Hill producer Jim Mills suggested that network cameras follow members of the Senate Select Committee on a trip to Vietnam scheduled as part of its two-year project to investigate POW/MIA issues. From there, the project expanded into a broader look at modern-day Vietnam.