Trinh T. Minh-ha: Forgetting Vietnam

Trinh T. Minh-ha is a Vietnam-born composer, artist and author of some of the most profound works of essay filmmaking and literary theory of our age. Her most recent film unfolds spatially as a lyrical dialogue between the two elements—land and water—that underlie the formation of the Vietnamese term for ‘country’ (đất nứớc). Moving between footage shot in 1995 and 2012 on different video formats, the film looks to the memories of local inhabitants, immigrants and veterans to comment on today’s events. Through the insights of these witnesses to one of America’s most divisive wars, Vietnam’s spectre and its contributions to world history remain both present and all too easy to forget.

Trinh T. Minh-ha, Forgetting Vietnam, United States / Vietnam 2015, digital, colour, sound, 90 min, Vietnamese with English subtitles

The screening is followed by a discussion with the artist and an audience Q&A.

Biography

Trinh T. Minh-ha (b.1952, Vietnam) is a filmmaker, artist, writer and composer. Her seminal essay film Reassemblage 1982 was the first of eight feature-length films she’s made, which have been honoured in numerous retrospectives around the world. She has also created several large-scale collaborative installations and written numerous books, including Lovecidal: Walking with the Disappeared 2016, D-Passage: The Digital Way 2013, Elsewhere, Within Here 2011 and Cinema Interval 1999. She was the recipient of the 2012 Lifetime Achievement Award from Women's Caucus for Art and the 2006 Trailblazers Award at MIPDoc, Cannes. She is currently Professor of Rhetoric and of Gender and Women’s Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.

This screening is programmed in parallel with a retrospective of films by Trinh T. Minh-ha at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, from 2–9 December 2017.