Trinh T. Minh-ha

Born in Vietnam, Trinh T. Minh-ha is a filmmaker, writer and music composer. Her works include nine feature-length films: ‘What About China?’ (135 mins, 2021); ‘Forgetting Vietnam’ (90 mins, 2015); ‘Night Passage’ (98mins narrative, 2004); ‘The Fourth Dimension’ (87 min Digital Video, 2001); ‘A Tale of Love’ (108 mins, 1995), an experimental narrative; ‘Shoot for the Contents’ (102 mins, 1991), a film on culture, art and politics in China; ‘Surname Viet Given Name Nam’ (108 mins, 1989), a film on identity and culture through the struggle of Vietnamese women; ‘Naked Spaces - Living is Round’ (135 mins, 1985); and •Reassemblage (40 mins, 1982); twelve books, including ‘Lovecidal. Walking with The Disappeared’ (2016), ‘D-Passage. The Digital Way’ (2013), ‘Elsewhere Within Here’ (Immigration, Refugeeism and The Boundary Event, 2010), ‘The Digital Film Event’ (2005), ‘Cinema Interval’ (1999), ‘Framer Framed’ (on film, 1992), ‘When the Moon Waxes Red’ (on representation, gender and cultural politics, 1991), ‘Woman, Native, Other’ (on post-coloniality and feminism, 1989), ‘En minuscules’ (poems, 1987), and in coll. with Jean-Paul Bourdier, ‘A World in Dwelling’ (2011), ‘Habiter un monde’ (Paris, 2005), ‘Drawn from African Dwelling’ (1996), ‘African Spaces - Designs for Living in Upper Volta’ (1985). Her work also includes five large-scale multi-media installations: ‘Nothing But Ways’ (in coll. with L M Kirby, 1999, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco), ‘The Desert is Watching’ (in coll. with Jean-Paul Bourdier, 2003, Kyoto Art Biennale), ‘L'Autre marche (The Other Walk)’ from June 2006 until 2009 at the new Musée du Quai Branly in Paris (France, also in coll. with J-P Bourdier), and ‘Old Land New Waters’ that was commissioned for the opening of the Okinawa Fine Arts Museum in November 2007 which exhibited anew in 2009 in the same museum and was shown at the Guangzhou Art Triennial in China (Sept 6-Nov 16, 2008), in the Chechnya Emergency Biennale (2008), at Le Quartier, Quimper, France (Nov 14-Feb 14, 2016) and in Trieste, Italy (Museo Revoltella Nov 1-18, 2018), ‘In Transit: Between and Beyond’ (in coll. with L M Kirby, Manifesta 13, Marseille, France 2020).

She is the recipient of numerous awards and grants, including the 2014 Wild Dreamer Lifetime Achievement Award from the Subversive Festival in Zagreb, Croatia; the 2012 Women's Caucus for Art Lifetime Achievement Award; the "Trailblazers" Award at MIPDOC, Cannes; AFI National Independent Filmmaker Maya Deren Award, fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment of the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation, the American Film Institute, The Japan Foundation, and the California Arts Council. Her films have been given over sixty four (64) retrospectives—in Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Singapore, Korea, Austria, Denmark, Sweden, Argentina, Croatia, Columbia, Mexico, Finland, Brazil, Canada, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Slovenia, France, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Japan, India, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Australia, the UK, the US—and were exhibited at the international contemporary art exhibition Documenta 11 (2002) in Germany. They have shown widely in the States, in Canada, Senegal, Australia, and New Zealand, as well as in Europe and Asia (including in Italy, Belgium, Spain, Sweden, Finland, Japan, India, Taiwan, Jerusalem. ‘Reassemblage’ was initially exhibited at The New York Film Festival (1983) and has since then become a classic of critical ethnographic films. ‘Naked Spaces’ received the Blue Ribbon Award for Best Experimental Feature at the American Int'l. Film Festival and the Golden Athena Award for Best Feature Documentary at the Αthens International Film Festival (GA) in 1986; it toured nationally and internationally with the 1987 Biennial of the Whitney Museum of American Art. ‘Surname Viet Given Name Nam’ has received the Film as Art Award from the Society for the Encouragement of Contemporary Art (SF Museum of Modern Art), the Blue Ribbon Award at the American Film and Video Festival, and the Merit Award from the Bombay International Film Festival. ‘Shoot for the Contents’ won the Jury's Best Cinematography Award at the 1992 Sundance Film Festival and the Best Feature Documentary Award at the Αthens International Film Festival (GA), and toured internationally with the 1993 Biennale of the Whitney Museum. ‘A Tale of Love’ showed internationally in over twenty- four film festivals, including Berlin and Toronto; ‘The Fourth Dimension’ in Locarno, Vienna, Edinburgh, and London; ‘Night Passage’ in the UK, Austria, Spain, Japan, Korea, and Shanghai; and ‘Forgetting Vietnam’ in Paris, Copenhagen, Singapore, Taiwan, Sweden, Vancouver and Montreal, among others, and all of them continue to exhibit widely in the UK, Austria, Spain, Japan, Korea, and Shanghai.

Trinh Minh-ha has traveled and lectured extensively—in the States, as well as in Europe, Asia, Australia and New Zealand—on film, art, feminism, and cultural politics. She taught at the National Conservatory of Music in Dakar, Senegal (1977-80); at universities such as Cornell, San Francisco State, Smith, Harvard, Ochanomizu (Tokyo), Ritsumeikan (Kyoto), Dongguk (Seoul); and is Distinguished Professor of The Graduate School at the University of California, Berkeley.