Abstract
Trinh T. Minh-Ha’s films resist neat categorizations—questioning presumed constructs and disrupting the impersonal gaze of ethnographic cinema and the self-situating moves of reflexive documentary. This subversion of Western categories through the politicization of the personal has made her films and texts crucial to a broad spectrum of arenas, from feminism to post-colonial theory. In this chapter, Minh-ha resists the undertaking of this book to present biographical portraits, warning us against assuming “there is a ‘natural’ link between what happened in your life and the kind of work you do.” In addition to her films— which include Reassemblage (1982), Surname Viet, Given Name Nam (1989), Shoot for the Contents (1992), A Tale of Love (1995), Night Passage (2004), and most recently Forgetting Vietnam (2015; 2016), among others—she has created numerous musical compositions, books of philosophy, theory, ethnography, and poetry, and has designed several pieces of installation art. This chapter includes a biography of Minh-ha, an interview with Minh-ha from 1983 and an essay by Minh-ha from 1987 both originally published in The Independent Film & Video Monthly, as well as an original interview with Minh-ha from 2018.
