World-renowned filmmaker Trinh T. Minh-ha visits Greece with the support of Onassis Culture
On the occasion of two screenings of her first film (“Reassemblage,” 1982) and her last film (“What About China?,” 2022) within the context of the 13th Ethnofest (24 November – 4 December 2022), Trinh T. Minh-ha visits Athens with the support of Onassis Culture.
The filmmaker, whose multiple identities intertwine the fields she engages with, dismantles the concept of “authority,” examines the politics of representation, and chooses not to “speak for,” but to “speak nearby.” Through her multifaceted work as a filmmaker, theorist, composer, writer, and Professor at the Departments of Gender & Women’s Studies and Rhetoric at the University of California, Berkeley, she generates questions rather than answers, suggesting more open forms of seeing, receiving, and living in this world.
Her work defies or refuses to recognize the differences between the expressive means of writing, cinema, or music composition, and is more focused on the transformation processes than on a finite, closed result.
“Reassemblage” (40΄, 1982), a film shot on 16mm film, is presented forty years after its making in an anniversary screening, in the filmmaker’s presence. A study of Senegalese women and rural life, the film deconstructs the conventions of the ethnographic cinema of its time: The non-linear narration, her elliptical voice-over, and a string of images put together in a collage build a new form of economy, based on abstraction and the disappearance of academic authority. Acknowledging her subjective gaze, Trinh T. Minh-ha reflects on her positionality and attempts to break free from any colonialist impulse, or any effort to distinguish imagination from reality.
An open discussion will be held after the end of the screening, with Trinh T. Minh-ha in conversation with Eva Stefani (director of documentary films, visual artist, and associate professor of cinema at the Department of Communication and Media of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens) and Elpida Karaba (art theorist, exhibition curator, and lecturer at the Department of Culture, and Creative Media and Industries of the University of Thessaly).
Reassemblage, 1982
“What's your name?” a grandmother is asked, and she replies: “I don't have a name.” "How many people live in this house?,” “When?” she responds. The filmmaker’s latest film, “What About China” (135΄, 2022), is a cultural critique of a one-dimensional dominant narrative, giving space to the polyphony of China’s natives. Shot in the countryside of China, with footage from the 90s, the film mixes poetry, songs, and oral histories, and reveals the complex history of the country as well as the complexity of its depiction. The screening is held in the presence of the filmmaker.
What About China, 2022
The 13th Ethnofest – International Ethnographic Film Festival returns to Athens and the rest of the country – through online screenings – presenting documentaries from all over the world, films that record, highlight, and comment on the mosaic of human experience. From November 24 to 27, Ethnofest returns to the welcoming ASTOR cinema, while from November 28 to December 4, its online edition follows up with a selection from the program. Screenings, parallel events, and distinguished guests comprise this year’s edition, inviting us to remember the reasons that the festival has built such a stable and loyal audience over the years.
In this year’s edition, Ethnofest embraces the number “13” and all its cultural connotations. Acknowledging the ominous times we are living in, the acceptance of the given historical moment becomes a form of resistance, as well as a desire for the essential social claims: demands that are directly linked to access to information, the acceptance of diversity, and the sharpening of our ability to recognize multiplicity in our interpretations of reality.