SYNOPSIS
OLD LAND NEW WATERS
(Vietnam. 18 minute Digital Video, 2007)
by Trinh T. Minh-ha
© Moongift Films
Water has always played a vital role in Vietnamese
culture. Its life-sustaining power is evoked in the widest range
of mythical stories as these act on people's daily lives. Thank to it,
Vietnam in ancient times was named Dât nuoc van xuân --the
land of ten thousand springs.
Old Land New Waters is initially conceived
as an installation composed of two video sequences to be projected simultaneously
and continuously. One sequence features the earth element and the other
features the water element with images of the people and their related
activities accordingly distributed. The two sequences are meant to unfold
spatially as a kind of dialogue and encounter between land and water--
the two elements that underlie the formation of the term "country" ( dât
nuoc ) in Vietnamese.
One of the myths surrounding the creation of Vietnam
involves a fight between two dragons, whose intertwined bodies fell into
the South China Sea and formed the country as we know it today with its
curving "S" shaped coastline. Legend also has it that our ancestors,
the Hundred Viet (Bach Viet; "con rong chau tien" )
were born from the union in 2800 BC of a Dragon King, Lac Long Quan (or
King of the Under-Sea) and a Fairy, Au Co (or daughter of a Mountain
Immortal). This was how Vietnam as a nation was said to have been founded,
the home to both people from the flatlands and people from the highlands,
whose common origins is recalled in the term dong-bao ("born
of the same pouch") used for "people."
Throughout the four thousand years of its eventful history,
marked by destruction, wars and natural calamities, Vietnam still preserves
many of its ancient faces and practices. Following China's leap of great
changes, Vietnam after the war has emerged both as a fast-growing economy
and a booming tourist destination. Vietnam is now reverted to its classic
images of: soft sandy beaches, women on sampans, straw conical hats,
paddy-fields, water buffaloes, lotus-ponds, Ha Long Bay and fishermen's
boat in deep turquoise sea--all connected with water, the lifeblood of
the country. The "Vietnam fever" has spread wide among vacationers
of east and west. Some 2.9 million foreigners--with the biggest group
coming from China, and nearly 300,000 Americans (war veterans and ex-refugees)--visited
the country last year. In the current atmosphere of terror, Vietnam,
ironically, is found to be one of the safest places a traveler can go--the
safest in all of Asia, according to Hong Kong's Political and Economic
Risk Consultancy.
The name of Vietnam has returned in American vocabulary
as history seems to repeat itself and wars that would not end continue
to divide the world. On the interface of memory, we are being reminded
that victory, which comes in more than one form, is not necessarily the
prerogative of the most powerful. On the interface of time, however,
the question that often arises among those who return to Vietnam twenty
or thirty years after the war ended is: What is left? What can one see?
The images I am offering of Vietnam focuses on the daily contributions
of women to the well-being of a rebuilding society, as well as on some
of the markings of old and new in Vietnam's everyday. They also raise
questions concerning the way, as consumers and suppliers, we look, capture
the ordinary and travel with images.
The everyday is usually thought of as the banal, the
familiar and the static--something we are so used to that it tends to
go unnoticed. But there is always the possibility of the everyman turning
into a suspect and of everyday activities turning into political activities,
as exemplified by the struggles of women and marginalized peoples around
the world. The everyday is difficult to show and pin down, because everyday
happenings allow no hold.
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