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TRINH T. Minh-ha
Lives in Berkeley, California

Old Land New Waters

digital video and Hi-8 (exhibited on DVD)
18'
2007

 

 

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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