October 24, 2022: KUV Seminar: Media School 13.00-15.00 (only for Media School Students)
Screening of “What about China?” followed by Q&A, presented by the School of Media Arts, the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts and Terrassen: 17.00-20.00: Bio 1711, Flæsketorvet 38 B, 3rd floor
About Trinh Minh-ha:
World and language, body and text, image and sound, Self and Other. Film artist and theorist Trinh Minh-ha has since the 1980s made one of the most advanced attempts in film history to give the fundamental conditions of the medium a (self-)critical form. Born and raised in Vietnam, Trinh migrated to the United States at the age of 18 during the war, and speaks from experience about cultural identity, representation and the need to confront history. An urgent subject of her work is the colonial legacy that is deeply embedded in the way images and meanings are created, not least in documentary film, which she deconstructs with confidence in the audience’s intelligence and judgment. With films shot in Vietnam, China, Japan and West Africa, it is a body of work shaped by encounters with other cultures, often with women in front of the camera. She herself does not distinguish between fiction and documentary among her own films. One could add that her work does not distinguish between theory and practice either, and that it is more topical than ever.
About the film:
In ‘What About China’ (2022), Trinh Minh-ha returns to material shot in rural China in the early 1990s in a reflection on the rich and complex history of the country – and of the mediums of film, text and voice. At its heart is the ancient Chinese principle of harmony as the basis of nature and existence. Trinh’s thought-provoking montage of image, sound and text deconstructs the authority traditionally assumed by all three. At the same time, the rural China we encounter in ‘What about China?’ is not merely a bygone world whose inhabitants and spaces are encapsulated in analogue film and video with an awareness and sensuality that testifies to the fundamentally ethical dimension of Trinh’s personal poetics. As stated in the film, ”Time is a river/ What if the ancient is not past and the modern, neither present nor futuristic?” ‘What about China?’ was awarded the New:Vision Prize at CPH:DOX 2022.
The screening will be followed by a live conversation with Trinh Minh-ha, moderated by Jane Jin Kaisen, artist and Professor of the School of Media Arts, the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Copenhagen.