Trinh T. Minh-ha. The Ocean In A Drop

FILM SERIES

Wednesday, January 18, 2023, 7 p.m.
SCREENING + INTERVIEW
Monika Czyzyk, Bamboocene ( I want to build a rocket ), 2021
Video, 78'
followed by a conversation with the artist
Moderator: Iris Dressler

Polish artist Monika Czyzyk, a recent fellow of Akademie Schloss Solitude, uses video-montage to create a darkly humorous Sci-Fi story in her video work Bamboocene: Memories of Synchronicity: two astronauts in costumes from Taobao arrive at a Chinese village in a leisurely manner (as if falling from a rocket capsule to the ground), a bit confused, they approach the performers who are practicing Huangmei opera, and start performing to the music. The film's title references the circadian phenomenon of the same kind of bamboo blossoming at the same time in different locations as a metaphor for the dislocation of time and space that occurs when cultural memories of other places collide in different contexts.
(Source: https://monikaczyzyk.org/bamboocene-i-want-to-build-a-rocket)

Wednesday, January 11, 2023, 7 pm
SCREENING + TALK
Safi Faye, Letter From My Village (Kaddu Beykat), SN 1975, 90’
Moderator: Yara Richter

Shot in three weeks during a rainy season with a crew of three, Letter from My Village was Safi Faye’s first feature-length film. In a sparing, docu-drama style, Faye’s voiced-over letter to a friend is punctuated by sharp black and white images of her rural hometown, held captive by wildly fluctuating prices for its crops. Although Faye is deeply concerned with the economic crisis produced by a reliance on an outdated, colonial system meant to hamper self-sufficiency, she also warns against the corruption of the new Black middle class in the city. (bit.ly/3gP5bnQ)

Wednesday, December 7, 2022, 7 p.m.
SCREENING + TALK
Trinh T. Minh-ha, Reassemblage, 1982
Digital film (from 16mm), English, 40'
Distributor: Arsenal Institut für Film und Videokunst, Berlin
Moderation: Iris Dressler
 
As part of its film series accompanying the exhibition Trinh T. Minh-ha. The Ocean In A Drop, the Württembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart presents Trinh’s first film, Reassemblage, from 1982 – which at the same time is her only short film. Following the screening, there will be an opportunity to discuss the content, forms and concerns of the film with Iris Dressler. The film is in English and the conversation in German.
 
About the film
From 1977 to 1980 Trinh taught at the National Conservatory of Music and Drama in Dakar, Senegal. Originating in this period is her publication authored with the photographer and architect Jean-Paul Bourdier, African Spaces: Designs for Living in Upper Volta (1985), as well as her first two 16mm films, Reassemblage and Naked Spaces – Living Is Round (1985), dedicated to the rural spaces of various regions of West Africa. The latter is also shown in the exhibition The Ocean in A Drop.
At the beginning of Reassemblage one hears from the voice-off: “Scarcely twenty years were enough to make two billion people define themselves as underdeveloped. I do not intend to speak about, just speak nearby." With her aesthetic practice and methodology of “speaking nearby” – as differentiated from speaking “about,” “for,” or “on top of” – she approaches foreignness with intimacy and respect, thus thwarting the colonial gaze of ethnology.
In this film, Trinh challenges us, as the Dokumentarfilmwoche Hamburg writes, “to hear with our eyes and see with our ears. ‘A film about what?’ she asks herself and the audience. ‘A film about Senegal?’ Reassemblage does not get to the bottom of village life on the spot, but takes it as an opportunity to reflect on ethnographic film and its colonial implications. According to the title, emblematic images are rearranged, brought into different contexts and habitual appropriations of what is.” (bit.ly/3VI4LhX)

Wednesday, November 30, 2022, 7 p.m.
SCREENING + TALK
Trinh T. Minh-ha, The Fourth Dimension, 2001, 97'
Film evening with Zakarea Alsadi
Moderated by Yara Richter

Synopsis to the film:
When one goes on a journey today, the journey is ritualized by the visual machine. The image that comes alive while framing time is where the real and the virtual meet. In the process of ritualizing Japan's "Hundred Flowers," it is the encounter between the self and the other, the human and the machine, the viewer and the image, the fact and the fantasy that determines the relational field in which new interactions between past and present become possible. "Rituals" are shown in their multiple functions and manifestations, including such obvious sites as festivals, religious rituals, and theatrical performances that incorporate not only regularity in the structure of everyday life, but also the dynamic actors in the ongoing process of creating digital images at the speed of light.

Our guest:
Zakarea Alsadi has worked in Syria and Lebanon as a filmmaker, photographer, and theater director, but is equally experienced in radio and television hosting. He has been working in Germany since 2016 and is studying film and media at the Film Academy Ludwigsburg, majoring in documentary film. He is currently working on a documentary film and artist portrait.

Wednesday, November 2, 2022, 7 p.m.
SCREENING + TALK
Trinh T. Minh-ha, Night Passage, 2004, 98'
Film evening with Julian Bogenfeld
Moderated by Alexander Sowa

At our first film evening for the exhibition Trinh T. Minh-ha. The Ocean In A Drop, filmmaker Julian Bogenfeld and artist and art educator Alexander Sowa discuss Trinh T. Minh-ha's genre film Night Passage (2004).
First, they consider stylistic choices in terms of the film's scene design, sound design, montage, and camera. In conjunction with this, they ask how the production framework is related to the relationship between fiction and documentary in Night Passage. In doing so, they consider production decisions and constraints, such as task assignments, team size, technical resources, and funding, and discuss the extent to which these affect the aesthetic impact of the finished film.
Julian Bogenfeld studied philosophy at HU Berlin, University of Stuttgart and PARIS 8 until his master's degree, then film production at Filmakademie Ludwigsburg and La Femis Paris. He works as a freelance filmmaker, media artist and producer and has a teaching position at the Film Academy Ludwigsburg in the department of co-production. His work focuses on projects with a German-French focus.