Nguyen Trinh Thi

Life and Education

Nguyen Trinh Thi studied journalism, photography, international relations and ethnographic film in the United States. She graduated with Bachelor of Arts in Russian and English, Hanoi Foreign Studies College, Hanoi in 1994, Master's Degree in Professional Journalism, University of Iowa, Iowa in 1999 and Master of Pacific International Affairs, University of California, San Diego (UCSD) in 2005.

In 2009, Nguyen founded and directs Hanoi Doclab, an educational center and studio for the production of documentary films and video art. in Hanoi.

Letters from Panduranga (2015)

Through a network of Champa scholars, Nguyen spent a number of residency periods in Ninh Thuan between 2013 and 2015. Letters from Panduranga extends her experimentation between documentary and fiction in an essay film portraying a Cham community living on the most southern and last surviving territory of Champa, an ancient kingdom dating back nearly two thousand years and conquered by Dai Viet (current day Vietnam) in 1832. The essay film, made in the form of a letter exchange between two filmmakers, was inspired by the fact that the Vietnamese government is to build Vietnam’s first two nuclear power plants in Ninh Thuan, right at the spiritual heart of the Cham people, threatening the survival of this ancient matriarchal Hindu culture that stretches back almost two thousand years. Public discussions regarding the project have been largely absent in Vietnam due to strict government controls over public speech and media, and local communities have also been excluded from consultations. The film also alludes to the legacy of war and colonialism; exploring and reflecting on landscape and portrait, documentary and fiction, art and ethnography, as methods of working in film and art, and their limitations in accessing the other cultures, peoples, experiences, as well as history and the past. Nguyen Trinh Thi says, “As artists, we have contradictory desires: to be engaged, but also to disappear.” Among other references are facts relating to the United States’ destructive bombing during the Vietnam War, artifacts from colonial exhibitions and art collections, the vulgar place of tourists and the cultural policies of UNESCO, and quotes from one of Nguyen’s main influences, Chris Marker, notably his film essay Letter from Siberia (1957), and Statues Also Die (1953), both of which were incisive and novel in their critique of the impacts of industrial and colonial movements.

Song to the Front (2011–2012)

Nguyen Trinh Thi re-edited a historical Vietnamese war film produced by the Vietnam Feature Film Studio named Bài ca ra trận in 1973, transforming the obscure black-and-white classic into a vignette that deconstructs the melodramatic and romanticized elements of social-realist drama.

The original Northern Vietnamese film, Song to the Front is a propagandist story of patriotism, a typical genre of this style of cinema that glorifies the heroic struggle of the proletariat class. Trinh Thi uses a form of suspense editing akin to the mastery of Hitchcock, where the composition of the lens, grade of color and sound dramatizes the narrative. In Trinh Thi’s edit, this near-blinded young man is shown as a human being with emotion who transforms into a fighting machine. A starry-lit sky cuts in and then a series of birds take flight. This young man’s eyes may be bandaged but his memories give him strength. After surgery for his battle wounds, this heroic soldier is very weak with poor sight, but determined to continue to fight. The piece ends with the sounds of firing bullets and a young man’s crazed glee at qualifying as marksman to return to the front with a gun in his hands.

Trinh Thi extrapolates the central narrative of the film into a 5-minute abstraction, her jump cuts and use of still frames are heightened with her use of Stravinsky’s ‘The Rite of Spring’, referring to the ritual in pre-Christian Russia where a young girl dances herself to death – a vision that Stravinsky claimed was to propitiate the god of Spring. For Nguyen Trinh Thi, these young soldiers who gave their lives for their country are the sacrificed pagans.

Series: "Unsubtitled" (2010), "Que faire" (2012) and "Solo for a Choir" (2013).

In this series, Nguyen trinh thi explore possibilities for combining video installation with performance art, and possibilities of preserving differences of individuals while creating a sense of collective experiences. Nguyen Trinh thi worked on a long-term film project about Nhân Văn–Giai Phẩm affair – the suppressed literary movement of the 1950s and the only instance of widespread intellectual dissidence ever to occur in North Vietnam – and its legacy of dissent in Vietnamese art over the past five decades. Thematically, she continues to study the issues and reflect on the history and development of the role and position of the artist in the Vietnamese society and issues related to Vietnam’s problems concerning censorship and artist freedom of expression. Thi invited 19 Hanoi artists who made up the social constellation of Nha San Studio to face the camera, eat an item of food of their choice, then state their name followed by the name of the food they had just consumed. Individually, these are statements parodying the Maoist practice of self - criticism, interrogation sessions where the artist question must unequivocally explain the intentioned meanings of his work. Collectively, the chorus evokes a quiet protest against the long running methods of surveillance and intimidation that are still pervasive in Vietnam.

Landscape Series #1 (2013)

Nguyen Trinh Thi’s Landscape Series #1 (2013) presents the idea “landscape as the silent witness of history”. During her search for such photos, Trinh Thi came upon hundreds of images in which anonymous persons were portrayed in landscapes – and always in the same position, pointing to indicate a past event, the location of something gone, something lost or missing. In these images, the figures are all in a similar pose, pointing at something unseen in the distance – a drama, a disappearance, a tragic episode, something that clearly seems to represent a past or a present threat: a yawning gap which, since it cannot be seen, can only be pointed out. Together these anonymous witnesses, portrayed in compelling uniformity by innumerable Vietnamese press photographers, seem to be indicating a direction, a way forward out of the past, a fictional journey.

Love Man Love Woman (2007)

Nguyen Trinh Thi's documentary Love Man Love Woman (2007) is about the lives of gay men in Vietnam, also focuses on repression in society. The film portrays master Luu Ngoc Duc, a famous spirit medium in Hanoi, as well the Mother Goddess cult widespread in Vietnam, whose communities offer a haven to many gay Vietnamese. Here, the Dong Co, or religion’s priestesses, perform rites and rituals that include many celebratory elements such as dazzling altars, flamboyant costumes and sumptuous rituals with candles, incense, sequins and feathers.

Filmography

“Jo Ha Kyu”: experimental film, 10 minutes, HD video, color (2012)

“I Died for Beauty”, experimental film, 7 minutes, HD video, color (2012)

“Rain, Poems, Toilet Paper”: documentary, 70 minutes, video, color (in production)

“Song to the Front”: experimental film, 5 minutes, B&W (2011) (#1 in project “Vietnamese Classics Re-Cut Series”)

“Unsubtitled”: video installation (various loops), HD video, color (2011)

“Chronicle of a Tape Recorded Over”: experimental documentary, 25 minutes, video, color (2011)

“Terminal”: video, single channel, 5 minutes, color (2009)

“Spring Comes Winter After”: experimental video, 6 minutes, color (2009)

“93 Years, 1383 Days”: experimental documentary, 30 minutes, video, color (2008)

“Love Man Love Woman”: documentary, 52 minutes, video, color (2007)

“A Chungking Road Opening”: documentary,20 minutes, video, color (2005)

Exhibitions/ Screenings

Nguyen Trinh Thi's documentary and experimental films have been screened at international festivals and art exhibitions including Jeu de Paume, Paris (2015); CAPC musée d’art contemporain de Bordeaux; the Lyon Biennale (2015); Asian Art Biennial, Taipei, Taiwan (2015), Taiwan; 5th Fukuoka Triennale, Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, Japan (2014); Finalist Exhibition, APBF Signature Art Prize, Singapore Art Museum (2014); 15th Jakarta Biennale, Indonesia (2013); “If The World Changed,” 4th Singapore Biennale (2013); “Move on Asia: Video Art in Asia 2002 to 2012,” ZKM, Karlsruhe, Germany (2013); Okinawa Prefecture Art Museum, Japan (2012); and DMZ International Documentary Film Festival, Korea (2011); Oberhausen International Film Festival; Bangkok Experimental Film Festival; Artist Films International; Summer Exhibition 2011, DEN FRIE Centre of Contemporary Art, Copenhagen; Unsubtitled, solo video installation, NhaSan Studio, Hanoi; ‘PLUS/ Memories and Beyond – 10 Solo Exhibitions by 10 Asian Artists’, Kuandu Biennale, Taipei; and ‘No Soul For Sale 2’, Tate Modern, London. In 2015–2016, Nguyen Trinh Thi is a resident at DAAD, Berlin.