FILM DISCUSSION

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Film as Translation A Net With No Fisherman'

with Scott MacDonald

MacDonald: YOIl grew lip ill Vietnam dllril1g the American prescllce there, TiI;s may be a stml/ge qllesfioll to (lsk about tlUlI period I bllt f'1/I CIIrious (/00111 wi/ether .11011 wen' a lIIovhxo('r mId wlllli fil lll s YO/l saw ill those yenrs.

Trinh: I was not at all a moviegoer. To go to the movies then was a real feast. A new film in town was always an overcrowded, exciting event. The number of films I got to see before coming to the States was rather limited, and I was barely in tro- duced to TV before J left the country in 1970. Actually, it was only when the first television programs came to Vi etnam thai I learned to listen to English. Here also the experience was a coll ective one since you had to li ne up in the streets wi th everyone else to look at one of the TVs made available to the neighborhood. I had studied Engli sh at schooL but to be able to foll ow the actual pace of spoken Engli sh was quite a different matter.

Interview conducted by Scott MacDonald in November 1989, when Surname Vi/'! Gi!1{'1r Name Nam was screened at Utica CoUege of Syracuse University .

• bcept for the interview with Jayamanne and Rutherford, all titles have been added by myseJl for this book-T Mh.

111

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Minh-Ha, T. T. (1992). Framer framed : Film scripts and interviews. ProQuest Ebook Central <a onclick=window.open('http://ebookcentral.proquest.com','_blank') href='http://ebookcentral.proquest.com' target='_blank' style='cursor: pointer;'>http://ebookcentral.proquest.com</a> Created from ucsc on 2020-10-15 16:06:29.

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112 Interviews

M: Did you see Frellch films ill school?

T: No. A number of them were commercially shown, but during the last few years I was in Vietnam, there were more American than French films. My introduction to film culture is quite recent.

M: Reassemblage seems to critique traditional ethnographic movies-Nanook of the North, The Ax Fight, The Hunters, .. I assume yOIl made a conscioZlS decision to take 011 the whole male-centered history of etJHlographic moviemaking. At w/wt poil1t did .11011 become familiar with that traditio,,? Did you have specific films in mind whe/! you made Reassemblage?

T: No. I didn't. You don't have to be a connoisseur in film to be aware of the problems that permeate anthropology, although these problems do differ wit h the specific tools and the medium that one uses. The question of limit in wr iting, for example, is very different from that in filmmaking. But the way one relates to the material that makes one a writer-anthropologist or an anthropological filmmaker needs to be radically questioned. A Zen proverb says "A grain of sand contains all land and sea," and I think that whether you look at a film, attend a slide show, listen to a lecture, witness the fieldwork by either an expert anthropologist or by any person subjected to the authority of anthropological discourse, the problems of sub- ject and of power relationship are all there. They saturate the entire fie ld of anthro- pological activity.

I made Reassemblage after having lived in Senegal for three years (1977-80) and taught music at the Institut National des Arts in Dakar; in other words, after having time and again been made aware of the hegemony of anthropological discourse in every attempt by both local outsiders and by insiders to identify the culture ob- served. Reasscmb/agc was shot in 1981 well after my stay there. Although I had by then seen quite a number of films and was familiar with the history of Western cinema, I can't say this was a determining factor. I had done a number of super-8 films on diverse subjects before, but Reasscmblage was my fi rst 16 mm.

M: YOII mentiolled you were looking at films before .11011 weill to SCllegal. Were yO/l lookillg at the way ill which Senegal or other Africall cultures were portrayed ill film?

T: No, not at all. Despite my having been exposed to a number of non- mainstream films from Europe and the Slates at the time, I must say I was then one of the more passive consumers of the film industry. It was when I started making films myself that I really came to realize how obscene the question of power and

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Film As Tralls/atioll 113

production of meaning is in filmic representation. J don't reall y work in terms of in fl uence. I've never been able to recognize anything in my background that would allow me neatly to trace-even momentarily-my itinerary back to a single point of origin. Influences in my li fe have always happened in the most odd, disorderly way. Everything I've done comes from all kinds of direction, certainly not just from film. It seems rather clear to me that Reassem/Jiage did not come from the films I looked at, but from what J had learned in Senegal. The film was not realized as a reaction to anything in particular, but more I would now say, as a desire not to simply mean, What seems most important to me was to expose the transformations that occurred with the attempt to materialize on film and between the frames the impossible ex- perience of "what" constituted Senegalese cultures, The resistance to anthropology was not a motivation to the making of the film. It came alongside with other strong feelings, such as the love that one has for one's subject(s) of inquiry.

M: So the fact IIwt .11011 fO//1/d a film form different from what has become co/welltiollal as a mellllS of imagi/Ig Cll/ilire was accidellta/.

T: Not quite accidentaL because there were a number of things I did not want to reproduce in my work: the kind of omniscience that pervades many films, not just through the way the narration is being told, but more generally, in their structure, editing and cinematography, as well as in the effacement of the filmmakers, or the invisibility of th eir politics of non-location. But what I rejected and did not want to carryon came also wilh the making of Reassemblage. While J was filming, for ex- ample, I realized that I often proceeded in conformity with anthropological preoc- cupations, and the chall enge was to depart from these without merely resorting to self-censorship.

M: O/Im ill Reassemblage there'lI/h' flit abrupt /IIovelllelll of tlte camera or a suddeu wi ill Ihe middle of a 1II0tioll tltal ill a 1I0rmal film would be allowed 10 Iwve a sellse of complelioll. Comillg to tlte films from the arella of experimelltal 1II0viemakillg, I felt familiar willt those kil/ds of tactics. Had .11011 seell mllel, of wltat ill Ihis cOllI/try is called "avalll -garde film" or "experimelltal film?" /'m sorr y to be so persistellt ill Irying to relate YOII to film! I call see it troubles .11011.

T: [Laughter] J think it's an interesting problem because your attempt is to situate me somewhere in relation to a film tradition, whereas J feel the experimentation is an attitude that develops with the making process when one is plunged into a fil m. As one advances, one explores the different ways that one can do th ings without having to lug about heavy belongings. The term "experimental" becomes question-

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11 4 Ill terviews

able when it refers to techniques and vocabularies that allow one to classify a film as "belonging" to the "avant-garde" category. Your observation that the film fore- grounds certain strategies not foreign to experimental filmmakers is accurate, al- though I would add that when Reassell1blage first came out, the experimental/avant- garde film world had as many problems with it as any other film milieus. A man who has been active in experimental filmmaking for decades said for example, "She doesn't know what she's doing."

So, while the· techniques are not surprising to avant-garde filmmakers, the fil m still does not quite belong to that world of filmmaking. It differs perhaps because it exposes it s politics of representation instead of seeking to transcend representation in favor of visionary presence and spontaneity which o ften constitute the prime criteria for what the avant-garde considers to be Art. But il also differs because all the strategies I came up with in RcassclI1blage were directl y generated by Ihe material and the context that define the work. One example is the u se of repetition as a transformi ng, as well as rhythmic and structural, device. Since the making of the film, I have seen many more experimental films and have sat on a number of grant panels. Hence I have had many opportunities to recognize how difficu lt it is to reinvent anew or 10 defamiliarize what has become common practice among film- makers. It 'Nas very sad to see, for example, how conventional the use of repetition proved to be in the realm of "experimental" filmmaking. This does not mean that one can no longer use it , but rather that the Challenge in using it is more criti cal.

I still think that repetition in Reasscmblage functions very differentl y than in many of the films I have seen. For me, it's not just a technique that one introduces for fragmenting or emphasizing eff ects. Very oft en people tend to repeat mechanicall y three or four times something said on the soundtrack. This technique of looping is also very common in experimental music. But looping is not of any particular inter- est to me. What interests me is the way certain rhythms came back to me while I was traveling and filmin g across Senegal, and how the intonation and in fl ection of each of the diverse local languages inform me of where I was. For example, the film brought out the musical quality of the Sereer language through untranslated snatches of a conversation among vill agers and the varying repetition of certain sentences. Each language has it s own music and its practice need not be reduced to the mere fu nction of communicating meaning. The repetition I m ade use of has, accordingly, nu ances and differences built within it, so that repetition here is n ot ju st the automatic reproduction of the same, but rather the production of the same with and in differences.

M: When I had seen Reassemblage enough to see it ill detail, rather !linn just lettillg it flow by, I lIoticed somethillg that strikes me as very ulII/Sllal. When you focll s 011 a subject, you dOIl'f see it frolll a single pial/e. Instead, you move to different positions II car and fa r and

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Film As Tral/slation 115

fro m side lo side. You dOI/'t try to cilOOSC n vicw of tile subject; .11011 explore vnrious wnys of seeing il.

T: This is a great description of what is happening with the look in Rellsscm/J/nge, but I'll have to expand on it a little more. It is common practice among filmmakers and photographers to shoot the same thing more than once and to select only one shot- the "best" one- in the editing process. Otherwise, to show the subject from a more va ried view, the favored formula is that of utilizing the all-powerful zoom or curvilinear travelling shot whose totalizi ng eff ect is assured by the smooth operation of the camera.

Whereas in my case, the limit s of the looker and of the camera are clearly ex- posed, not only through the repeated inclusion of a pl urality of shots of the same subject from very slightl y di fferent distances or angles (hence the numerous jump- cut effects), but also through a visibly hesitant, or as you mentioned earlier, an incomplete, sudden and unstable camera work. (The zoom is avoided in both Rens- sem/J/age and Nnked Spaces, and diversely acknowledged in the more recent films J have been making.) The exploratory movements of the camera-or structurally speaking, of the film itself-which some viewers have qualified as "d isquieting," and others as "sloppy," is neither intentional nor unconscious. It does not result from an (avant-garde) anti-aesthetic stance, but occurs, in my context, as a form of retlexive body writing. It s erratic and unassuming moves materialize those of the filming subject caught in a situation of trial, where the desire to capture on cellu loid grows in a state of non-knowingness and wi th the understanding that no reality can be "captured" without trans-forming.

M: The subject Slays ill its world alld .11011 try to figllre Ollt what YOll r relationship to it is. /t's exactly the opposite of "takillg a positiol/": it's seeing what different positiolls reveal.

T: That's a useful distinction.

M: YOllr illterest ill livlllg spaces is obvioll s ill ReassembJage alld 1110re obvious ill Naked Spaces. You also did a book all hvillg spaces.

T: In Burkina Faso, yes. And in collaboration with Jean-Paul Bourdier.

M: Did your illterest iI, li ving spaces precede making tlte films or did it develop by makil/ ~ II /em?

T: The interest in the poetics of dwelling preceded Reassem/llage. It was very much inspired by Jean-Paul, who loves vernacular architecture and has been doing relent-

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116 Interviews

less research on rural houses across several Western and non-Western cultures. We have worked together as a team on many projects.

Reassemblage evolves around an "empty" subject. I did not have any preconceived idea for the film and was certainly not looking for a particularized subject that would allow me to speak about Senegal. In other words, there is no single center in the film-whether it is an event, a representative individual or number of individuals in a community, or a unifying theme and area of interest. And there is no single process of centering either. This does not mean that the experience of the film is not specific to Senegal. It is e1Itirely related to Senegal. A viewer once asked me, "Can you do the same film in San Francisco?" And I said, "Sure, but it would be a totally different fil m." The strategies are, in a way, dictated by the materials that constitute the film . They are bound to the circumstances and the contexts unique to each sit- uation and cultural frame.

In the processes of emptying out positions of authority linked to knowledge, competence and qualifications, it was important for me in the film to constantly keep alive the question people usually ask when someone sets out to write a book or in this case, to make a film: "A film about Senegal, but what in Senega!?" By "keeping alive" I mean, refusing to package [a] culture, hence not settling down with any single answer; even when you know that each work generates it s own constraints and limit s. So what you see in Reassemb/age are people's daily activit ies: nothing out of the ordinary; nothing "exotic"; and nothing that constitutes the usual focal points of observation for anthropology's fetishistic approach to culture, such as the so-call ed objects of rites, figures of worship and artifacts, or in the narrow sense of the terms, the ritualistic events and religious practices. This negation of certain institutionali zed cultural markings is just one way of facing the issues that such markings raise. There are other ways. And while shooting Reassemblage, I was both moved by the richness of the villagers' living spaces, and made aware of the difficulty of bringing on screen the different attitudes of dwelling implied without confronting again and differently what I have radically rejected in this film. This was how the idea of making another film first appealed to me. Naked Spaces was shot three years later across six countries of West Africa , while Reassemblage involved five regions across Senegal.

M: Reassemblage takes illdividual subjects-people, actiOI1S. objects-alld provides var- iOlls perspectives 011 them; Naked spaces elliarges the scope /1111 II ses all allalogolls proce- dllre. YOII deal with the sallie gelleral topic-domestic livi ll g spaces-alld explore its partic- IIlar manifestatiolls ill olle geographic area afler (/I/Olher. And the scope of Ihe view of particular spaces is enlarged too: you pan across a givfII space frolll differellt distances and angles (i ll Reassemblage tile camera is generally still. tllougll you filmed from differellt still

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Film As Trans/ation 117

POSitiOIlSJ, There's n tendency to move back alld forth across the space in different directions to rediscover it over alld over ill new COlltexts.

T: The last description is very astute and very close to how I felt in making Naked Spaces. Although I would say that the procedure is somewhat adverse (even while keeping a multiplicit y of perspectives) rather than analogous to the one in Reasselll- bIage, the immediate per ception is certainly that of an enlarged scope; physically speaking, not only because of the way the fi lm works on duration and of the variety of cultural terrains it traverses, but also because, as you point out, of it s visual treat- ment. In Reassemblage. I avoided going from one precise point to another in the cinematography. I was dealing with places and was not preoccupied with depicting space. But when you shoot architecture and the spaces involved, you are even more acutely aware of the limit of your camera and how inadequate the fleeting pans and fractured still images used in Reassemblage are, in terms of showing spatial relation- ships.

One of the choices I made was to have many pans; bul lIot smooth pans, and none that could give you the illusion that you're not looking through a frame. Each pan sets into relief the rectangular delineation of the frame. It never moves obliquely, for example.

M: It's a/ways horiz01Ifa/.

T: Or vertical.

M: And if's a/ways referrill g back to .11011 as all individual filmmaker behilld the ClllI/era. /I lIever becomes this sort of Hitchcock motiOIl t/trough space thai makes the camera feel so powerfUl.

T: In someone else's space I cannot just roam about as I may like to. Roaming about wit h the camera is not value-free; on the contrary, it tells us much about the ideology of such a technique.

M: It's hrterestillg too tlwt tile way YOIl pall makes dear tlrat tile ollly thing that we're goiug to filld Ollt about .11011 perso/1ally is that YOII're interested ill this place. Milch hmrd-/teld call/erawork is implicitly autobiographical, emotionally self-expressive. 111 your films camera lI/ovemerll is not (lllfobiographical except in the sense thai it reveals yOIl were ill this place with these people for a period of time and were interested ill them, rather tlran in what tlr ey mean to yOllr culture.

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Film As Trims/titian 119

T: There are many ways to treat the autobiographical. What is autobiographical can often be very political, but not everything is political in the autobiographical. One can do many things with elements of autobiography. However, I appreciate the distinctivn you make because in the realm of generalized media colonization, my film s have too often been described as a "personal film," as "personal documentary" or "subjective documentary." Although I accept these terms, I think they really need to be problematized, redefined and expanded. Because personal in the context of my film s does I/ot mean an individual standpoint or the foregrounding of a self. I am not interested in using film to "express myself ," but rather to expose the social self (and selves) which necessarily mediates the making as well as the viewing of the film,

M: "Persona/," "subjective," sllggrsts that something else is impasoual al1d objective, which is ludicro/ls.

T: Right. Too often a binary opposition between subjectivity and objectivity is perpetrated in the claim that one makes subjective documentary-as if anyone can produce such a thing as objecti ve documentary. There is nothing objective and truly impersonal in filmmaking, although there can be a formulary, cli ched approa.ch to film. What you often have is a mere abidance by the conventions of documentary practice, which is put forward as the "objective" way to document other cultures. It is as if the acknowledgment of the politics of the documentation and the document- ing subject disturbs because the interests at stake are too high for the guardians of norms.

M: III Naked Spaces we're inside tile dwellings as milch as we're outside. III fact, the movemellt frol1l outside to iI/side, mId vice versa, seems celltral to tile film,

T: Yes. When you walk from outside to the inside of most rural African houses, you come from a very bright sunlight to a very dark space where fo r a moment, you are totally blind. It takes some time to get adjusted to the darkness inside. This experience is one of the conceptual bases of Naked Spaces. To move inside oneself , one has to be willing to go intermittently b lind. Simi larl y, to move toward other people, one has to accept to take the jump and move ahead blindly at certain mo- ments of inquiry. If one is not even momentarily blind, if one remains as one is from the outside or from the inside, then it is unlikely that one would be able to break through that moment where suddenly everything stops; one's luggages are emptied out; and one fares in a state of non-knowingness, where the destabilizing encoun- ters with the " unfamili ar" or "unknown" are multiplied and experienced anew.

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120 Interviews

M: Since as a tccllllology, film captures light, the traditionalassllmptioll has beell that allythillg that's dark is 1I0t worth looking at. At most, darkness is a call text for romance al1d for da/lger. Evell ill a docllmentary, we'd either never sec tire types of dimly lit spaces yOIl reveal, or they'd be lit artificially, which would allow the techllology to record them, bllt ill a Wily that would distort the real experiel1ce of SI/Ch Spilces. Ti,e teclmology dcterll/Illes what olle call see about other wllu res. You depart frolll this 1I0t 0111.11 by recording indoor spaces ill IIreir OWlIl1aturallow liKIzt conditioll$, bllt by repealillg the beauty of these spaces.

T: You can i magine these houses being shot with a light inside. What would to- tall y be damaged are the quality of solid darkness and the shafts of li ght that pene- trate the inside spaces.

M: '"stead of illtimate-if tlwt's thc right word-the spaces would become bare, empty.

T: Yes, yes. . The question of cinema and li ght is pivotal in Naked Spilces. Dwell- ing is both material and immaterial; it invites volume and shape as well as it reflects a cosmology and a way of liv ing creativit y. In other words, to deal with architecture is to deal with the notion of li ght in space. To deal with the notion of li ght in space is to deal with color, and to deal with color is to deal with music, because the ques- tion of light in film is also, among others, a question of timing and rhythm. Such mutual accord of elements of daily existence is particularly strikin g in the built en- vi ronments filmed and the way these materiali ze the multiple oneness of life.

There are a number of direct statements on color and color ti ming in Naked Spaces. ("Color is life I Li ght becoming music"; "Orange and blue; warmer or colder; more luminosity, more presence. Timing acts as a link between natural and artifi cial li ght.") The look of a film and how people are represented depends so vi tally on color timing. For me, it has always been crucial to work closely with the color timer, even more so in Naked Spaces. Very often, when films shot in Africa reach the lab, they are treated the same way as with film s shot in Western cultures; that is, they are timed more on the blue side of the color char! for people with fair skin. Hence, the African people often come out with a skin color that is dull charcoal black. This is not the vibrant skin color that J saw and retained, so J devoted much of my energy at the lab learning from and cooperating with the timer on "color correcting"; in- sisting, whenever appropriate, on the orange and warmer colors to obtain the miss- ing vibrant quality.

The relationship J worked on between color and light was also the link I conspic- uously drew between architecture, music and film. The connections that determine the structure of the fil m are those that I have experienced in the li ving spaces of the different peoples involved. The roundness of lif e is not only lit erally manifested in

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Film As Trallslntioll 121

the round shape of many of the houses. It is also recognizable in all spheres of socio- cultural activities, such as the various dances shown or even the way women work together. "The house opens onto the sky in a perfect circle," a voice states in Naked Spaces, while the subtitle of the film reads "L iving Is Round."

M: YOII were 1(llkil1~ (lI1OlIt Il1Ilsic (llId nrc/rileclure. Ct'rtaillly olle of the thillSs tllal 's very IIIl/1sl/(/1 alJOul 1100r Africnll films is tl//' soundtracks: tire movcmclIl/mck (llId fortll betwccn /IIusic, oilIer eucryday sOl/llds, tile various I/(/rrativcs alld silwccs. I kilOit' lID/hillS 1l/1Cl1I/ your ml/sic cOIIIIJ() sitioll, but laSSllme litis illtcrWc(l vi ll~ of differeut strallds of sOUlld IlIld silmcc derives fro ll1 your illteresl ill IIIlIsic.

T: I guess no\v I can come back to your earlier question about the film background I don't really have, by relating the wCly I work with film to my musical background. I farc with ease in the world of experimental music, perhaps because of the cultural hybridity of both its instrumentation and its deterritorialized space-the way it questions the boundaries of what is music and what is not. I really admired, for example, John Cage, whose Zen-inspired compositions and readings have effected radical change in all fields of the arts. I was very attracted to his work because it touched on something I was similarly groping for but had not articulated. The fact that Cage brought silence and the sounds of life both into the consecrated realm of concert halls and out onto the domain of public debate, was very liberating. "Ex- perimental music" in this context is a constant exploration of sound as sound, rather than as a substitute for something else: a personal feeling or a psychological state. Narrative music is thus exposed in its ideology, its closures and its link with power and knowledge.

Many viewers have, indeed, thought of my films as operating more like a musical score than like any structure found in film traditions. And I also tend to think of film montage and music composition as being very much alike, although one can also argue further that in poetry, a very similar process happens in the play of words. (Wit h the understanding here that montage is not reduced to the editing stage, but can occur in the conception and shooting stagers} of the film as well.) For me, the exploration of new complex subjectivities and the problematizing of the subject in contemporary theory can be best carried out through poetical language- as long as poetical language is not equated with a mere aestheticizing tool nor prac- ticed as a place to consolidate a "subjective" self. In poetry, the "[" can /lever be said to simply personify an individual. It's amusing that the feedback I o ft en get from my relatives or close friends on my book of poems tends to be something like: "We are far from suspecting that you could be what you are in your poetry!" For them al! the feelings and situations depicted in poetry are persollally true. They immedi-

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122 Interviews

ately associate you with the "I" who speaks in your poetr y and assume it 's "rea!," which is not wrong, but it's not accurate either, In poetical language, there is no "[" that just stands for lIIyself. The "]" is there; it has to be there, but it is there as the site where all other ''I's'' can enter and cut across one another. This is an example of the very strength and vitality of poetical language and of how it can radically con- tribute to the questioning of the relationship of subjects to power, language and meaning in theory. Th eory as practiced by many is often caught in a positioning where the theori st continues to stand in a "safe place" to theori ze about others.

M: i'oe of tell felt that way about the little J kllOlV of theoretical film writillg. Part of the rea SOIl J write articles is to consolidate a positiOlI for myself witllill all illStitlltioll, to give myself a cerlailllll lwlIIll of ecollolllic and psychic seCi/rity. Theorists talk abolll how the art ist is situated witllillan ecollomie syslelll, /Jilt I rarely hear of (/11.'1 discllssioll of lOrit lll g theory liS II //IlIrke table aetioily.

T: Exactly, and vice versa.

M: If I show Nanook of the North lind Ax Fight, all d then Reassemblage, it's like film IIII:ory illll(lioll. Allybody who sees those three films, ail e after the other, is discoverillg 1111 sorls of tllillgS about all of them. ulIIguage has such a l!!I rd tillle grasping what's 011 the saeCl! thai it's just easier to pllt the films lIext to olle IlllOther and let the al/dimce discover what they reveala/1011f each other.

T: There is a tendency in theorizing a/1011f film to see theorizing as one activity and fi lmmaking as another, which you can point to in theory. This is an important ques- tion for me because I teach theory partly to people who come to school- in a uni- versity department of cinema-primarily for film production. There's an antitheory tradition that runs deep among some of the "production people." The way I try to teach it by promoting "bridge" courses and by emphasizing the indispensabili ty of their mutual challenge can actually be summarized in an old statement by Marx: that theory cannot thrive without being rooted in practice, and that practice cannol liberate it self wit hout theory. When one starts theorizing aOOllt film, one starts shut- ting in the field; it becomes a field of experts wh ose access is gained through au- thoritative knowledge of a demarcated body of "classical" film s and of legitimi zed ways of reading and speaking about film s. That's the pari I find most ste ril e in theory, It is necessary for me always to keep in mind that one cannot really theorize about film, but only with film. This is how the field can remain open.

M: Tile thing I find frustrating about tile wllole theory/practice issue as it has played itself Ollt ill tile last 10 or J 2 years is tllat /0 make (l fi lm 0111' lias to take a chali ce witli oll e's life and

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olles resources. Its true ill Hollywood films alld ill il/depel/dent film, where, if YOII're goillg to try to come up with $35,000 to make a movie, YOIl have to restructllre your life. You have to take a direct al/d dallgerous part ill whatever the ntl/iol/al economy is that you live in. When / write abo/lt films-fIIld I dOIl't write theory, but / tltillk it's also true there-you dOIl't IltIve to reorgal/ize allythillg: you Cflll remain withill till illstitutiOllal framework where you IltIve a salary: y011 CfIIl critique without chal/gillg your lifestyle. / go to il/dependellt film to see what those people who are willillg to put their lives 011 the lille are able to discover. Theory call be brilliaJlt alld elllightellillg, but I dOIl't feel people's lives Oil the lille ill the same way.

T: Well , I think there's such a resistance to theory because theory is often de- ployed from a very safe place. And I am not even talking here about the other resistance which is found within the academic system itself, where theory can threaten the status quo and a distinction could be made between intellectual activi- ties and academicizing pursuits. But I, myself, think of theory as a practice that changes your li fe entirely, because it acts on your conscience. Of course, theory becomes a mere accessory to practice when it speaks from a safe place, while prac- tice merely illust rates theory when the relationship between the two remains one of domination-submission and of totalization. I see theory as a constant questioning of the framing of consciousness-a practice capable of informing another practice, such as film production, in a reciprocal challenge. Hence theory always has the possibility, even the probability, of leading the other practice to "dangerous" places, and vice versa. I can't separate the two. The kind of fi lm I make requires that eco- nomically, as you point out, I readjust my life; but because of the film, I am con- stantly questioned in who I am, as its making also transforms the way I see the world around me. You know; history is full of people who die for theory.

M: Wlren I'm making these statemellts, 1 guess I'm fllillkillg of those ill academe wlro call themselves theorists, but who merely use tlte real theorists for tlreir OWII academic ends.

Call we go back to Naked Spaces? How did you decide Oil tire order of the sectjolls? Until / went to the atlas, I thought perhaps you travelled ill a circle.

T: Except for the end of the film, which, as you just suggest, leads us back to it s opening sequences, Naked Spaces is organized in the geographical order of my itin- erary: from one country, one region, to another. Each location is indicated by having the names of the people and the country appear briefly on the screen, more as a footnote than as a nametag or a validating marker. The soundtrack is however more playful: a statement made by a member of a specific group may be repeated in geographical contexts that are different. Needless to say, this strategy has not failed to provoke hostility among "experts" of African cultures, "liberal" media specialists, and other cultural documentarians.

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114 hlterv;ew5

Apparently; some "professional" viewers cannot distinguish between a signpost whose presence only tells you where you are, and one whose visual arrangement suggests either a different function or certainly more than one f unction at work. Depending on h ow one uses them, letters on an image have many functions, and viewers ""ho abide by media formulas are often insensitive to this. For me, the footnotes or the names that appear on screen allow precisely the non-expert viewer to recognize thai a few selected statements issued by one source or heard in one group are repeated across borderlines of ethnic specifici ties. Thus, the names also function as aCknowledgment of the strategical play of the fil m-w hat one may more easily call the filmmaker's manipulations.

Such deliberate act of taking, for example, a Dogan (Mali) statement on adorn- ment and desire or on the house as a woman, and juxtaposing it wi th specific im- ages of dwellings among the Kabye (Togo) and then again, among the Birifor (Bur- ki na Faso) is a taboo among experts. Because what one ethnic group says can absolutely not be reproduced in another group. Yet thi s is also applicable in the film to quotes from Westerners such as Paul Eluard's "The earth is blue like an orange," wh ich appears among the Oualatans (Mauritania) as well as the Fan (Benin). And I use a similar strategy in music: in both Naked Spaces and Rcasscmblagc, music from one group is first heard with that very group and then varingly repeated afterwards in other groups. The viewer is diversely made aware of such "vio lation" of borders.

There is a very interesting issue involved here. The peoples of Third World coun- tries used to be lumped together in their undifferentiated otherness. And this is reflected pervasively in Western media discourses-radio, books, photos, films, television. You might have a program on Vietnam, for example, but you hear per- sistent Chinese music in the background. Even today, in many mainstream films on the Vietnam experience, the people cast for the Vietnamese roles are the neighbor- ing Southeast Asians who can hardly speak a word of Vietnamese. Of course, fo r many American viewers, it doesn't matter. Asians are Asians, and you can even take someone from the Philippines or from Korea to fill in the roles. Well, it's cer- tainly the perpetuation of such attitude that the cultural experts and anthropologists work against. And they should. But to rectify the Master's colonialist mistakes, they have come up with disciplinarian guidelines and rules. One of them, for example, is that you always show the source of the music heard, hence more generally speak- ing, the music of one group should not be erroneously u sed in the context of an- other group. However, such rationalization also connotes a preoccupation wi th au- thenticity; one that supposes culture can be objectified and reified through "data" and "evidences." Here the use of sync sound becomes binding, and its validation as the most truthful way of documenting is taken for granted.

It is fine fo r me if the Master's heirs are now correcting his errors to raise their own consciousness of other cultures. But when circumstantial and history-bound

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Film As TrallslatiOIl 125

methods and techniques become validated as the norms for all fi lms no matter who the (a historical) subject is, then they prove to be very dangerous: once more an established frame of thinking, a prevailing system of representation is naturalized and seen as the only truthful and "correct" way. Surely enough, these "rules" are particularly binding w hen it is a question of Third World p eople: films made on white American culture, for example, can u se classical music from any European source and this hardly bothers any viewer. In Naked Spaces, I can neither reproduce the Master's mistakes nor abide by his disciplinarian cri teria of correct representa- tion, hence the importance of the naming of the peoples to acknowledge the delib- erate gesture of carrying certain cultural statements across ethnic boundaries.

M: So /III' imagery is a killd of grid against which the spectator call consider YOllr mrmip- Irlalioll s of SOUlld.

T: Yes. One could certainly have a more restrained soundtrack, and let the images move back and forth in their tran scultural signs, but the choice here was to have that transgressive fluidity in the sound. The visuals, as we discussed earlier, have their own crit ical strategies. After alL boundaries are extremely arbitrary. Bounda- ries between nations are a more recent phenomenon. The village people themselves refer to kinship boundaries, which are usually also the boundaries between different ethnic groups. And ethnic grouping cuts across geo-political borderlines.

M: Olli' {lcti vity that certailliy cOllfirms IIri s idea is the poundillg of graill, which we see il/ culture after Cillture.

T: At fiv e o'clock in the morning, I would wake up and listen to that sound in most villages, and it would go on late into the evening. The day begins and ends with women pounding to prepare the meals. And yes, it is a coll ective background sound that you'll recognize in villages across Af ri ca.

M: At tillles you can't tell whether what YOII're hearing is daily labor or /fIusic.

T: More than the music of labor, you also have the body rhythm of collective work. In the film, the way women bodily relate to each other while working is very rhyth- mic and musical. In other words, daily interactions among the people are music. You mentioned earlier the various aspects of the soundtrack: the silence, the com- mentary, the environmental, vocal and instrumental music. All these elements form the musical dimension of the film, but the relationship between and wit hin the visuals is also rhythmicall y determined. The wayan old woman spins cotton; the way a daughter and her mother move in syncopation while they pound or beat

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Film As Translation 127

the grain together; the way a group of women chant and dance while plastering the floor of the front court in a house; or the way the different cultures counteract or harmonize wi th one another; these are the everyday rhythms and music of life. In such an environment one realizes how much modern society is based on compart- mentalization-the mentality colonialism has brought in with its spread.

M; On the sOlllldtmck, the statemellfs abollt Africa are presented ill sllch a way thai the deepest voice seems to speak from within tile wltllres beillg diswssed, the highest voice speaks-as you said ill the introduction to the text published in Cinematograph (Vol. 3, 1988, pp. 65-78)-"according to Western logic and mainly quotes Westerll thinkers"; and the medium-mllge voice (yours) speaks in Ihe first perSOIl "and relates personal feelings mId ol1serontio/ls." Bllt while the spenkers vary their statements of tell overlap. Were .11011 sllggest- illg that wilat you heard nOOut {Illy given wlillre, or within any cllltllre, is a combination of w/wl it says nOO/l/ itself and whal il knows is said aOO1l1 it by others?

T: One can see it that way, certainly. Some viewers have told me, "If you had fictionalized these voices a little bit more" (which probably means they want the voices to be more in opposition rather than simply be "different"), " it'd be easier to understand the role of these voices." But J find it informative that a number of people have difficulty hearing the difference between the voices, even though their tone ranges, their accents and their discursive modes are so distinct. On the media we are used to consume one, unitary, narrating voice-over. It is not surprising then, that it may take some viewers more than one viewing to hear them in their differ- ences. A viewer thought the difficult y comes from the fact that the voices are "di- sembodied" (meaning ther eby that the narrators do not appear on screen), which may be true. But I think there are also other factors in volved, because this same viewer may have no diffi culty whatsoever listening to a "disembodied" omniscient voice-over on one of the TV programs. This is all a question of: "How does one speak?"

Any person who has had prolonged interactions with country people and villag- ers-whether from their own culture or from another culture- know that you have to learn to speak di fferently in order to be heard in their context. So if you listen carefully to your own speech in your interactions with them, you would recognize that even though you may both speak the same language- the case is further com- pl icated when you don't-you speak differently. This sounds like a very banal state- ment until you find yourself in a situation where you wish to relate again what the villagers say to your audience-in other words, to translate them. Translation, which is interpell ated by ideology and can n ever be objective or neutral, should here be understood in the wi der sense of the term-as a politics of constructing

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128 Illterviews

meaning. Whether you translate one language into another language, whether you narrate in your own words what you have understood from the other person, or whether you use this person directly on screen as a piece of "oral testimony" to serve the direction of your film, you are dealing wi th cultural translation.

To give an example: a villager may say, while pointing toward the front court of her dwelling: "Calabash, we call it the vault of heaven." The local interpreter may translate: "The calabash is the vault of heaven." But when outsiders to the culture Iry to translate this to their audience back home, it might come out, "The calabash is like the vault of heaven," or "stands for the vault of heaven." There are all these little devices in language that "explain" instead of stating "this, this" or "th is is this" with no explanation added. When you translate, you automatically rationalize what people say according to the logic and habits of your own language or mode of speak- ing. This tendency, which seems to me to be particularly naturalized in the media, is dealt with in Naked Spaces by assigning the explanatory logic and its ensuing lin- guistic devices to the voice of the woman whose English accent (actually South Af- rican) is easily detectable (Linda Peckham's). It was a real challenge for me to try to bri ng out these subtleties of translation and to remain consistent in the distinction of the three discursive modes. Moreover, the only voice in the film that can afford to have some kind of authority (not media or academic institutionalized authority, but rather a form of insider's assertion) is the mediated voice of the people, the low voice that quotes the villagers' sayings and other statements by African writers. My voice gives little anecdotes and personal feelings.

The distinction made between the voices is not a rigid one, and the latter do at times overlap in what they say and how they speak. The moment when the three are joined together is in the last third of the film, when the viewers see images of the Fon's lake-dwellings. The two voices that often speak in agreement then-as contrasted to the third one-are those of the two women of color: Barbara Christian and myself. We haven't really met in our statements until then, but here the issue in the village, whose people's income thrive on touristic trade, concerns the contro- versy of giving and taking. As it is fairly well known, in the First World-Third World relationship, what may assert itself in appearance as "giving" very often turns out to be nothing but a form of taking and taking again. The problema tics of donor and acceptor is thus played out in that part in the soundtrack. This can be said to be the only place in the film where the First World and Third World voices work in oppo- sition. Most of the time, it was important for me that the voices meet or not meet, but that they are not just set up in opposition to one another.

The voice of Western logic quotes a number of Western writers, induding Cixous, Bachelard and Eluard. For me, these quotations are very relevant to the context of dwelling I was in. I don't situate myself in opposition to them just because the

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writers are Westerners. Actually, in a public debate, a white man resentfully asked me why I quoted Heidegger and added: "W hy not let liS quote him?" This is like saying that I have encroached on some occupied territory and that the exclusive right to use Heidegger belongs to Euro-Americans. Such ethnocentric rationale is hard to believe (although not the least surprising) when you take as examples, fig- ures of modernity such as Picasso or Brecht (to mention just two names): what would their works be lik e without their being exposed to African sculpture or to Japanese and Chinese theaters? Hi story constantly needs to be rewritten. In fact, whether I like it or not, Heidegger is also part of my hybrid culture.

M: 11/ effect IIII.' SOlllldtmck is IlIlCXUS for alltilesc voices. Alld a/ltilest.' ,IQices met.'! ill you; yozi"re 1I0t ollly a fi rst-persoll ol/server, yOl/have illtemalized 1111111.11 voices.

T: Exactly. The place of hybridity is also the place of my identity.

M: Actl/C1/1y, differellt forms of culture are presellt ill Africa: thaes 110 poillt ill pretelldillg that Afrialll peopit's live ill iso/atiOIl frolll the world.

T: Sometimes you can never win. On the one hand, I encounter reactions such as "Why don't you show more of the Irucks and the bicycles we see all the time in African villages?" When I hear similar questions, I can tell the type of villages the queslioner is famili ar with; he may have been to rural Africa, but he seems to have no idea of the villages I went to, which are fa irly remote and diffic ult of access. On the other hand, some viewers also ask, "Why show all the signs of industrial society in these villages?" (referring here to the way the camera lingers on, for example, the white doll a child was playing with in Reasselll/l/age, a red plastic cup, or a woman's pink plastic shoe in Naked Spaces).

At the same time as it is reassuring for certain Western viewers to see evidence of their own industrial society spreading over Third World rural landscapes (what one can call the marks of the West in its economical dominance), it is also irr it ating for others to see the camera explicitl y looking at some of these industrialized objects, or gazing at them a few seconds too long. Since the shooting of Reassembillge has informed me of the potentials of a notion of cultural difference whose manifesta- tions neither oppose nor depend on the West-in other words, neither succumbs to assimilation nor remains entirely pristine in its traditions-the decision was pre- cisely to work in the remote countryside where circulation was mainly either on foot, by bicycle, or by pirogue. As a result of this choice, whenever any element of industrial SOciety was found in such context, it became very visible. And the camera reproduced accordingly such visibi li ty when an opportunity presented itself.

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130 Interviews

M: Olle tiling filM's /ICCII slild alllllli all//Iropologisis i~ tllat, essentially, by $:oinS ill to "primiti1'e" w/tllres (lIId galherillg illfo rmalioll, they are "scouts" for the dOli/man I wlture, leadillg the way toward lit e deslructioll of illdigel/(J1/s people.

T: There is some truth to that metaphor, although it is a dangerous one because none of us who have gone to the cultures in question can claim to be free of it. I would use another metaphor: sometimes anthropologists act as if they were fisher- men. They select a location, position themselves as observers and then throw a net, thinking that they can thereby catch what they look for. I think the very premise of such an approach is illu sory. If I pick up that metaphor again and apply it to myself, I would have to be the net myself , a net with no fi sherman; for I' m caught in it as much as what I try to catch. And I am caught with everything that I try to bring out in my films.

M: You were snyil1g yesterday thai some people 11'110 like the African films were llI1pleas- aI/ fl y surprised by Surname Viet Given Name Nam. There are comll1OI1 elemellls ill all fltree films, bllt your decision to explore what we might COl/sider your own experience, your OWl! heritage, requires you to /IIore o/'I,ioIlSly distallce yourself, to more overtly quest ion your 011'11 positioll of autiJority with regard to yOllr wlture. Ollt' of fhe cellters of tile fi lm is the set of illt erviews that were originally recorded /If Vie! namese by someone else, and then tmllslated illto Frel1dl, alld are p·llall y rl'Cllactt'd 111 your film by WOI/I/'1/ who have come to the Ullited States from Vie/nalll. /11 at least Ollt' st'l1~e, the film is as /III/cit abol/t the process of tmllslatillg meallillg frolll 011(: culture to lillO/her, a~ it is a/l()lIt Vietllam.

T: You raise several questions. That some people are reacting diff erently to my last film is true, but I would not say this is only due to a difference between my African films and this film. There has already been a split reaction between Reassemblage and Naked Spaces. A number of people who r eally loved Rcassemblage had problems with Naked Spaces when it fir st came out. I gu ess everything has it s own time. When Reasselllblage was released, I had to wait a whole year before the film really started circulating and before I got any positi ve feedback from viewers. It was such a hope- less situation, for I was piling up, one after the other, rejections from film festivals and numerous other film programs. In their own words, people "didn't know what to do with such a film"; it was totally misunderstood. Then unexpectedly, the film started being picked up simultaneously from diverse places. Viewers were bewi l- dered but very e nthusiastic; different venues opened up, and the unanticipated circulation of the film continues to grow since then. A somewhat similar process happened with Naked Spaces. Although the film got to be shown almost immediately to some packed audiences, the disappointment from those who came expecting

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another Reassemblage was quite apparent. Most of the praise and positive reactions I obtained in the first few months were from people who had not seen Reassemblage. One of the sympathizing viewers at a festival told me thai when she shared with others her admiration for the film, she was told thai she had to see Reassemblage fir st before offering any comment. Reassemblage was then often referred to by these view- ers as a model. And yet, since then, I have had very, very moving and elating feed- back on Naked Spaces-sometimes well beyond any expectations I had for that film.

M: Was tile objection some people had to Naked Spaces the fact that it is less overtly feminist tlltHl Reassemblage, that it doesn't foreground ti re role of women ill African 0 11- tures as obviously as tile earli er fil m?

T: I don't think so. The most obvious problem people have with Naked Spaces is the length of the film. The notion of time and of duration are worked on in a way that makes the experience quite excruciating for some. Time not only as the result of editing, but time made apparent wi thin the frame itself: by the gaze of the cam- era; by it s slow unstable movement across people and their spaces; by the quies- cence and contemplative quality of many of the scenes shown; and moreover by the lack of a central storyline or guiding message. Moviegoers do not mind sitting a couple of hours for a narrative feature. But to go through two hours and fifteen minutes of non-action film wit h no love story, no violence and "no sex" (as a viewer reminded me) is a real tr ial for many and a "far out," unforgettable experi ence for others. It was important for me on the one hand, to bring back a notion of ti me in Africa that never failed to frustrate foreigners eager to consume the culture at a time- is-money pace. (One of them, for example, warned a newcomer: "You need im- mense, un-limit-ed patience here! Nothing is happening!"). On the other hand, it was also critical to bring about a different way of experiencing film as well as of relating to our environment.

Some of the objections to Naked Spaces also have to do with the fact that certain viewers prefer the overt politics of Reassemblage. But Reassemblage cannot be re- peated, and the audiences for the two film s sometimes overlap, other times remain quite distinct. Naked Spaces seems to appeal strongly to people who are aware of the predicament of dwell ing in modern society and are tuned to the inseparable ques- tions of aesthetics, spirituality, sociality and environment. I have had, for example, intense and exalted feedback from a few Native American viewers. I could never anticipate this when I made the film .

For a while, I di dn't quite know how to locate some of the hostilities toward Surname Viel Given Name Nam, although in making it, I was well aware of the risks that it was taking and the kind of difficulties it might encounter. Now that I have

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732 Interviews

participated in more public debates on the film than I ever wish to, I can at least identify two kinds of viewers who have problems with it. Actually, they are the same, since the problems are fundamentally related. These are the viewers who either feel antagonistic, maintain a competitive attitude toward the feminist struggle, or are simply unaware of its complexities in relati on to other struggles of liberation. Many of these viewers may think of themselves as pro-feminist, but they are not really into the feminist struggle, and this slips out in the questions they raise, in the lack of concern they show for any earnest inquiry into gender politics.

There are also other viewers who identify themselves as belonging to the anti- war movement and who do not really see women in SIIr/wlIle Viet (j ust like many male radicals in the sixt ies could not take seriously their female co-workers and the feminist struggle that was burgeoning independently right in the m idst of their struggle for freedom of speech). These viewers tend to deny, or worse, to obSCllre entirely the question of gender by constantly casting the Vietnam reality back into the binary mold of communism and anti-communism. They also seem to be more preoccupied wit h what they milita ted for, or more eager to preserve an idealized image of Vietnam they supported, than they are will ing to look at the actual situa- tion of post-revolutionary Vietnam. As with many libertarian movements, there are people who are genuinely fighting for change, hence they remain sensitive to the complexities of the feminist struggle; and there are those who only work to consol- idate a positi on of authority, hence they feel threatened by any form of resistance other than the one they are familiar with-here feminist. Right now in Vietnam, the leaders are acknowledging some of the failures of the system and are raising ques- tions pertaining to the transformation of socialist society. So even when the people who are directly involved see the necessity for change, you have people from the outside still holding fast to a past image of Vietnam, where for example, all the women involved in the revolution are upheld as "heroines." The work of critical inquiry cannot be content with fixed anti-positions, which were, in their own time, necessary in regards to the war in Vietnam, but need to be problematized in the context of contemporary histories of poli tical migration.

The struggle will never end, and we women still have a long way to go. The more I discuss these questions, the more I reali ze how little is known of the historical debates within the feminist struggle, not to mention the Sisyphean efforts of women of color across nations to expose the politics of gender within revolutionary move- ments. After this long detour to respond to your question, let me end it by li nking it briefly to the initial point you made on the fact that SlI n Ulllle Vie! is as much about the process of translating as it is about Vietnam. To unravel the "n ame" of Vietnam in the context of translation is to confront the much debated politics of i dentity- female identity, ethnic identity; nation identity. For translation, as I suggest earlier,

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Film As Trall slatioll 133

implies questions of language, power and meaning; or more precisely in this film , of women's resistance vis-a-vis the socio-symbolic contract-as mothers, wives, prostitutes, nurses, doctors, state employees, off icial cadres, heroines of the revo- lution. In the politics of constructing identity and meaning, language as translation and/or film as translation is necessarily a process whereby the self loses its fixed boundaries-a disturbing yet potentially empowering practice of difference. For me, it is precisely in fi ghting on more than one front at a time- that is, in fighting not only against fo rms of domination and exploitation but also against less easily locatable forms of subjection or of binarist subjectivi ty- that the feminist struggle and other protest movements can continue, as discussed earlier, to resist falling back into the consolidation of conformism.

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