VietNamNet Bridge – Art students have to pay nearly one hundred million dong for their theses to graduate from university. However, the theses are shelved when the students graduate, never to be seen again.

“The statue for the Hoa Lo Prison”

“The total expenses for my 23-minute film are approximately 100 million dong,” said Hoang Ngoc Son, a student of the art design faculty of the university. “The expenses would have been higher if I could not have used my friends as actors.”

“On average, the fee for hiring a main actor is 2 million dong per day and the fee for hiring an amateur actor is 500,000 dong,” he added.

Moreover, Son also had to draw five main pictures, design a disc cover and poster for the film, which cost 7-10 million dong.

In order to earn money for the graduation work, Son had to work hard for fashion shops and design a café. “I saved some money for hiring cameras and for filming with the jobs. If I had not taken these jobs, I would not have had money to graduate,” Son said.

Nguyen Manh Cuong, also an art design student at the Hanoi University for Theatre and Cinema, related that he had to spend 30 million dong on his graduation work, a film called ‘Mong’ (Dream).

Nguyen Trung Dung, a student of the Fashion Faculty under the Hanoi Industrial Fine Arts University, had to spend 10 million dong on his thesis materials, titled: “Clothing for youth with studies on the armour of Roman times”.

“I had to wander around markets to look for suitable fabric to tailor clothes. I went through nearly ten sets clothes which cost 500,000 dong each,” Dung related.

“Besides, I had to spend 2 million dong to hire models,” he added.

Meanwhile, Vuong Quyen, a student of sculpture at the University of Industrial Fine Arts, spent 10 million dong to make a statue for his thesis.

“My statue was made of plastic, not bronze. If I had tried to make a bronze statue, I would have had to spend 160 million dong at least,” Quyen complained.

The hard works

It takes art students a lot of work to complete the requirements for graduation.

Quyen’s thesis’ title was “The statue for Hoa Lo Prison”. He wanted to create hands that are breaking chains. It took him around one month to make the statue with the height of 1.3 metres and width of 1.2 metres.

Meanwhile, the biggest problem for Tien Thi Hue city, a student of graphic design under Hanoi Open University, was seeking a premise to rent as a ‘place for creation’. The student’s rented room was not large enough, while the university did not have enough places for students to work. Therefore, Hue had to rent an old house at 20 million dong for six months.

Cuong related that in his film, there was a scene in a house from the French colonisation time. After a lot of exertion, Cuong finally found an old house built during the economic subsidisation period and spent a lot of money to turn it into the house he wanted for the film.

What for?

While students have to pay very big sums of money for theses, their art works seem to be priceless, because they can never be solod. A lot of students said that they had put their works away for keepsakes.

“No one purchases our paintings. If someone does, they only pay small sums of money,” said Hue. “I would rather put it in my wardrobe to keep the first art work in my life for a memento.”

Quyen said he wished his works could have been seen. “If only the university had taken my work and propped up a part of the total sum of money I spent for the work,” he said.

VietNamNet/TP