One of the most evocative, incendiary and freeborn directors in documentary film, Trinh T. Minh-ha, visits Punto de Vista

The filmmaker will present her latest book, give a lecture and screen three of the most important films of her career.  

Trinh T. Minh-ha is a filmmaker, composer, writer, poet, literary critic, professor… but, above all, she is a ground-breaking artist who has revolutionised the traditional discourse of cinema and transformed the way documentary films are made.  Antonio Zirión -Professor of anthropology, photographer and documentary filmmaker- defined her to a T: ‘she radically breaks the rules of cinematic language and upsets all the conventions of documentary film, prompting us at the same time to take a deep questioning look at the meaning of the anthropological viewpoint and the classical ways other cultures are visually represented.’

In addition to innovating without bounds the way films are made, the Vietnamese-born filmmaker has also reformulated their very substance, the stories told through the camera lens. According to Zirión, her films revolve around ‘feminism, the hegemonic perspective on difference and sociocultural inequality, the problem of truth in the anthropological sciences and documentary cinema, the question of identity, intercultural hybridisations and clashes, and free artistic experimentation around the medium of film.’

This outlook, suggestive, polemical, militant and, at the same time, so dazzling, is amply present in the three films that Punto de Vista has programmed to pay tribute to the filmmaker’s career:

FORGETTING VIETNAM
South Korea, U.S.A., Vietnam, 2015, 90’, Digital
The images unfold spatially as a dialogue between the two elements—land and water—that underlie the formation of the term “country” (đất nứớc). Carrying the histories of both visual technology and Vietnam’s political reality, these images are also meant to feature the encounter between the ancient as related to the solid earth, and the new as related to the liquid changes in a time of rapid globalization.  Forgetting Vietnam is made in commemoration of the 40th anniversary of the end of the war and of its survivors.

NAKED SPACES - LIVING IS ROUND
United States. 1985. 135’. 16 mm
NAKED SPACES- LIVING IS ROUND is a poetic, subjective documentary, a lyrical meditation and an anti-anthropological reflection which detaches itself from the passionless voices of most ethnographic films. The narration provided by culture and authority is replaced here by the voices of three women, each with her own unique approach to documenting reality.

REASSEMBLAGE
United States. 1982. 40’. 16 mm
Dynamic images of women working the fields and dancing, rapid sequences of swirling dust and consecutive sunrises which appear, disappear and reappear in fast-moving shots. This is the essence of Reassemblage.

In addition to this FOCO on Trinh T. Minh-ha, one of the stars of this year’s Punto de Vista, the director will also be presenting her latest book in the Katakrak bookshop in Pamplona’s Calle Mayor: Lovecidal. Walking with The Disappeared. In this new publication, the author reflects on the state of endless war (e.g. U.S. military intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan or China’s occupation of Tibet), nonstop governmental subjugation, economic austerity and highly technologised military conflict. The presentation is scheduled for 5 p.m., Wednesday the 7th.

Finally, the Vietnamese filmmaker will give a lecture at 10 a.m. on Thursday the 8th in Baluarte’s Sala Bulevar: The everyday interval of resistance. In this talk, the filmmaker will address the rebellion that inhabits the day-to-day and the transnational struggles of women in the United States, Argentina, Mexico, and China:  ‘What is it that makes both talks and silences stained with shame? Sometimes the mind freezes and the heart goes on fasting: name, nation, identity, citizenship disappear. With every step, the world comes to the walker, and all around, on the immense screen of life, every event speaks.’

More information here.