In The Burr’s window space, and inside we present Hanoi-based Lucia Pham’s fizzy animations. She designed Bari, the newly liberated pink Berwick Bear – proudly featured in all of our posters and designs this year!
An essay film in the form of a letter exchange, Nguyễn’s personal and poetic film explores the complex legacy of cultural and historical occupation, its ongoing presence in the indigenous Cham community, and her role as an artist.
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As the journey starts, wide empty landscapes make one wonder what one is looking for. A mysterious object? A crime scene? Something horrifying? The scenes are getting more and more specific, but they do not lead to any concrete solution—only an injury in place of a metaphor. —Nguyễn Trinh Thi
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Nguyễn Trinh Thi is one of Vietnam’s leading contemporary artists. Her moving image work engages with the ways in which memory, history and representation are part of broader structures of power, the legacies of colonialism and war, and the erasure of indigenous Vietnamese cultures.
Nguyễn Trinh Thi’s Focus Programmes are supported by CREAM, University of Westminster and Centre for Screen Cultures at the University of St Andrew
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Resisting the westernised reliance on images for creating narratives, telling stories and experiencing the world, How to Improve the World turns to music and sound as a way of perceiving through listening. Originally a 3-channel installation, this aurally centred work reflects on the past, present and future of indigenous cultures of the people in Vietnam’s Central Highlands.
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Fifth Cinema begins with a quiet statement “I am a filmmaker, as you know.” That text and what follows, by Maori filmmaker Barry Barclay, who coined the term ‘Fourth Cinema’ to distinguish Indigenous cinema from the established ‘First, Second, and Third Cinema’ framework, provides structure to Nguyễn’s hybrid essay film that moves on multiple cinematic and topical terrains. Eschewing voice in favour of the written word and juxtaposing moving images of the filmmaker’s own daughter with archival images of Vietnamese women seen through the lens of the “ship’s officers”, the film slowly leads the viewer through a narrative of colonialism, indigeneity and cinematic limitations in representation. —Nguyễn Trinh Thi
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Sensory, colourful and widescreen, the forest is already naturally cinematic.
Since the turn of this century, the forest has fascinated a new generation of global art filmmakers who have chosen the forest as a space for their creative exploration. ‘Screening the Forest’ takes nature as its point of departure by weaving together cinematic forests from India, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam and the Philippines. In some cases, the forest may even refer to nothing but a world construed as its own territory.
Like the real forest, where many genuses of trees coexist, the programme emphasizes that cinema is constructed not only culturally and aesthetically, but also ecologically or even animistically. As new strategies and interpretations of the forest emerge from a variety of Asian filmmakers, new trees can be sowed within our own imagination.
Q&A with curator Dr. Graiwoot Chulphongsathorn
