The Ninth Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

115 ARTISTS Fourth Cinema (production still) 2018 Single-channel video, 57 minutes, colour, sound / Courtesy: The artist / Photograph: Jamie Maxtone-Graham Born 1973, Hanoi, Vietnam Lives and works in Hanoi Nguy n Trinh Thi’s Fourth Cinema 2018 continues her ongoing pursuit of combining her own moving images with found footage to create works that confront issues within a specifically Vietnamese context, but set against a universal backdrop. Drawing on personal accounts, popular movies, government films, news footage, documentary material, photographic images, home movies sold on eBay, and YouTube videos, she interweaves these with her own material in order to question how the camera mediates understanding. 1 Noted for their skilful cinematography and pointed editing, Nguy n’s films are gentle reminders that cinema has its own particular history of image-making and established preconceptions of people and place. Nguy n’s interest in documentary filmmaking is informed by studies in journalism and ethnographic film. This background has led the artist to create works that explore a subjective understanding of her own country — both its local, official rendition of history, and external viewpoints — as well as the ideals of women and men, the role of the artist in society, and landscape as metaphor. Fourth Cinema turns to the possibility of an indigenous authority in filmmaking — an autonomous identity that is derived from the culture and method of the filmmaker and their subjects. As expressed by Māori filmmaker Barry Barclay, Nguy n uses the concept and methodology of Fourth Cinema to structure her film. 2 Barclay’s ideas were groundbreaking, and, though often contested, they distinguished Fourth Cinema from the concept of ‘national’ filmmaking by promoting the role of film in reclaiming indigenous history and land. He also questioned the Western influence on cinema, together with its continued pursuit of ideas of colonisation. 3 Working with the concept of Fourth Cinema, Nguy n seeks a space between personal and collective memory, while continuing her interrogation of how to let others speak for themselves, a question raised in her earlier film Letters from Panduranga 2015. The culmination of her work over the last five years, Fourth Cinema is a reflection of Nguy n’s multiple identities: a citizen (of Vietnam, and of the world), a filmmaker, an artist, a woman, a mother. Narrating the film using Barclay’s text, Nguy n is interested in merging identities in order to be able to see things from a broader perspective, as she states: I’m speaking from the point of view that any one of us can potentially be the oppressed, and the oppressor . . . I’m interested also in the unknown, the invisible, the inaccessible, in potentialities. As Barclay said, ‘But I believe that in Fourth Cinema — at its best — something else is being asserted which is not easy to access’. 4 Arguably Nguy n’s most overtly political work to date, Fourth Cinema highlights the question of indigeneity as one that is impossible to address using generalisations. In her film, she presents both external and internal perspectives of her country and its history, as well as reflections on the cosmopolitanism of youth. Fourth Cinema resists a comprehensive history or narrative; instead, according to the artist, the film is informed by ideas of: . . . Fourth Cinema and indigeneity [that] function more on a metaphorical level, standing for the beauty and wisdom in the world that require respect. A metaphor for all things oppressed — women, minorities, the colonised. 5 Ultimately, Nguy n Trinh Thi is an artist who encourages us to reflect on the underlying rules and structures that determine how we see our lives, our world and our realities. Zara Stanhope Endnotes 1 Nguy n Trinh Thi co-founded Hanoi Doclab , a centre for documentary films and the moving image in Hanoi in 2009; Hanoi Doclab , <http://www.hanoidoclab.org/en/about-doclab/ >, viewed June 2018. 2 Barry Barclay defined Fourth Cinema in opposition to the framework of First (American), Second (Art House) and Third (Third World) Cinema; Fourth Cinema is a cinema by, about and for indigenous people. Based on principles of self-determination, he proposed Fourth Cinema could involve multiple forms of indigenous cinema as they operate at an international level. Barry Barclay, ‘Celebrating Fourth Cinema’, Illusions Magazine , no.35, 2003, p.7. 3 See also Barry Barclay, Our Own Image: A Story of A Māori Filmmaker , Longman Paul, Auckland, 1990. 4 Nguy n Trinh Thi, email to the author, 15 August 2018. 5 Nguy n, email to the author. nguy n trinh thi