As a prologue to what increasingly looks like an out-of-the-ordinary month of October to come, OOF! Fest presents a very special screening with Hanoian filmmaker / artist Nguyen Trinh Thi.
For the first time ever, two of Trinh Thi's recent video works (deeply rooted in the found-footage tradition) will show in Saigon. With the filmmaker herself in attendance, this too marks a rare opportunity for those looking to find out more about found-footage films to have their curiosity satiated.
The movies:
Vietnam the Movie
Nguyen Trinh Thi, 2016, 54'
Languages: English, with Vietnamese and English subtitles
Spanning the historical timeframe from the mid-1950s through the late 1970s, on the surface Vietnam the Movie appears to tell a chronologically-ordered development of the Vietnam War through a carefully-structured montage using familiar Hollywood classics, but also exploring the lesser-known or virtually-forgotten works by the likes of Farocki, Fassbinder, Herzog, Oshima, Ray, and Hui.
Utilizing external views of Vietnam, the film attempts a re-reading of the archived while resisting the comprehensibility and linearity of history. "Vietnam the Movie" is a chronology that at once presents "Vietnam on film" while examining the ways popular media can form our collective imagination, memory, and understanding of a war, a country and a nation.
Image of Vietnamese actress Nhu Quynh from Nguyen Trinh Thi's found-footage film "Song to the Front". |
Eleven Men
Nguyen Trinh Thi, 2016, 28'
Languages: Vietnamese, with English subtitles
Eleven Men is composed of scenes from a selection of Vietnamese classic narrative films featuring the same central actress, Nhu Quynh. Spanning three decades of her legendary acting career, most of the featured clips - ranging from 1966 to 2000 - were produced by the state-owned Vietnam's Feature Film Studio.
Eleven Men’s text has been adapted from "Eleven Sons", a short story by Franz Kafka first published in 1919, which begins with a father’s declaration: "I have eleven sons", then describes each one of them in acute and ironic detail. Transposing the father’s voice of Kafka’s story, the film begins with a woman stating: "I have eleven men".
About the film-maker
Nguyen Trinh Thi is a Hanoi-based independent filmmaker and video/media artist. Her diverse practice has consistently investigated the role of memory in the necessary unveiling of hidden, displaced or misinterpreted histories; and examined the position of artists in the Vietnamese society.
Thi studied journalism, photography, international relations and ethnographic film in the United States. She is founder and director of Hanoi DOCLAB, an independent center for documentary film and the moving image art in Hanoi since 2009.
Featuring a post-screening Q&A with filmmaker Nguyen Trinh Thi
Free entry