About this item
Highlights
- An inventive reimagining in book form of the revered filmmaker and theorist's cinematic meditation on Vietnam's originsAt once an artist's book and an interview collection by Vietnamese filmmaker, writer and feminist and postcolonial theorist Trinh T. Minh-ha (born 1952), The Twofold Commitment centers on Trinh's 2015 feature film Forgetting Vietnam, which takes up one of the myths surrounding the creation of Vietnam: a fight between two dragons whose intertwined bodies fell into the South China Sea and formed Vietnam's curving, S-shaped coastline.
- 208 Pages
- Art, Individual Artists
Description
Book Synopsis
An inventive reimagining in book form of the revered filmmaker and theorist's cinematic meditation on Vietnam's origins
At once an artist's book and an interview collection by Vietnamese filmmaker, writer and feminist and postcolonial theorist Trinh T. Minh-ha (born 1952), The Twofold Commitment centers on Trinh's 2015 feature film Forgetting Vietnam, which takes up one of the myths surrounding the creation of Vietnam: a fight between two dragons whose intertwined bodies fell into the South China Sea and formed Vietnam's curving, S-shaped coastline. Commemorating the 40th anniversary of the end of the war, the film draws inspiration from ancient legend to stage an ongoing contemporary conversation between land and water, creating a third space, another way, for historical and cultural re-memory.
This book features the film's lyrical, essayistic script, along with rhythmically distributed movie stills. Expanding on this central focus is a series of conversations between the filmmaker and critics and film and sound studies scholars dating from 2016 to 2022, amplified by an index identifying key concepts and ideas in the artist's work.
Review Quotes
At their best, Minh-ha's films evocatively destabilize the need for stakig out a single perspective without eradicating any one personality or mode of political and social commentary.--Tausif Noor "Art In America"
The book succeeds in pointing to other entryways and areas of research that have gone untapped in this artist's genre-bending practice.--Re'al Christian "Brooklyn Rail"