On 24 December 1948 on the banks of a common waterway in the province of Ðồng Tháp Mười (Plain of Reeds), the Southern (Communist) Party Conference was held at the store of revolutionary military leader Dương Văn Dương. Within twenty-four hours of the conference, graphic artists, musicians, painters and military leaders descended upon the site in the Mekong River Delta in order to finalise and set up their displays for the conference. Among the conference participants were Mai Lộc, Khương Mễ and other members of the region's military cinema division, who were editing the final moments of their documentary, The Battle of Moc Hoa, from their makeshift post-production laboratory on a small dinghy. Their exhibit was to be housed in a small temporary building on the site and would use a precariously balanced film projector powered by a portable generator. Khương Mễ, a founding member of the film unit, recounts that local villagers arrived in their dinghies throughout the day of the conference. In spite of a lack of advertising for the clandestine film showing rows of moored dinghies were evident, just as there would be bicycles outside popular picture palaces for a film premier in Saigon (Khương 1997). For many of the local farmers and families from nearby villages it was their first experience of cinema. The attendees were directed into the building where the first guerrilla film screening was staged. Khương and fellow film-maker Mai Lộc formed a protective perimeter around the projector and generator. If the projector toppled or the projection lamp were to become extinguished it might have meant that the screening would be cut short and a day-long trip to Saigon to procure replacement parts would then have to take place. For the twenty-minute newsreel depicting the Battle of Moc Hoa, Khương and Mai were given a standing ovation. The next morning, Khương found that the exhibition space had been stripped apart by overeager attendees who had arrived in the unfulfilled hope of seeing repeated screenings of the film (ibid.).