The essay film, made in the form of a letter exchange between a man and a woman, was inspired by the fact that the government of Vietnam plans to build the country’s first two nuclear power plants in Ninh Thuan (formerly known as Panduranga), right at the spiritual heart of the Cham indigenous people, threatening the survival of this ancient matriarchal Hindu culture that stretches back almost two thousand years.
At the border between documentary and fiction, the film shifts audience attention between foreground and background, between intimate portraits and distant landscapes, offering reflections around fieldwork, ethnography, art, and the role of the artist.
Nguyen Trinh Thi is a Hanoi-based filmmaker and artist. Traversing boundaries between film and video art, installation and performance, her practice currently explores the power of sound and listening, and the multiple relations between image, sound, and space, with ongoing interests in history, memory, representation, landscape, indigeneity, and ecology.
Nguyen uses montage to compose her work, drawing on different image media, from her own audio and visual recordings to found footage and still images from postcards, photography, newsreels, Hollywood films and ethnographic footage. She’s also interested in incorporating new mediums into current works include organic materials and natural forces.
Nguyen studied journalism and international affairs in the United States, with side courses in photography and ethnographic film. Her works have been shown at international festivals and exhibitions including the Asia Pacific Triennale of Contempory Art (APT9) in Brisbane; Sydney Biennale 2018; Jeu de Paume, Paris; CAPC musée d’art contemporain de Bordeaux; the Lyon Biennale 2015; Asian Art Biennial 2015, Taiwan; Fukuoka Asian Art Triennial 2014; Singapore Biennale 2013; Jakarta Biennale 2013; the Rotterdam International Film Festival, and Oberhausen International Film Festival.
In 2009, Nguyen founded Hanoi DOCLAB, an independent center for documentary film and the moving image in Hanoi. In 2015-2016, she was a fellow of the Berliner Künstlerprogramm of the DAAD.