Vietnamese-American filmmaker, writer, feminist and post-colonial theorist Trinh T. Minh-ha is readying her upcoming film “The Undying Desert.” “I’ve just finished editing it,” she told Variety at Ji.hlava Documentary Film Festival, where she’s celebrating a retrospective. At the same time, it’s considered ‘arid’ by colonizing forces.
All these prejudices about what a desert is still exist in our language. But it’s actually very lively,” she stated. In “The Undying Desert,” she examines people’s relationship with it.
The other theme has to do with why we go to the desert in the first place. It wipes away every notion that allows us to conform to certain ways of life. Suddenly, you don’t have to be polite or compete with others.
You go there to be with your true self.” “Some just use it as a terrain for sports. They’re there, but they are not with the desert. Native Americans see the desert as layers and layers of life, but it’s even more radical.
They always remember that their ancestors are with them too. Life and death go together.” Trinh T. Minh-ha is not finished with this subject just yet – she started working on another film immediately after “The Undying Desert.” Co-directed with longtime collaborator Jean-Paul Bourdieu, it will also be set there.
They plan to go there and colonize another planet,” she said. I was learning how I feel and what the desert actually brings me.” With works such as “Forgetting Vietnam,” “Surname Viet Given Name Nam,” “Reassemblage” and “What About China?,” she never focuses on individual stories. You’re inviting people to come in,” she explained.
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