What About China?

What About China?
by Trinh T. Minh-ha
(2022, 135 mins)

This poetic documentary draws from footage the filmmaker shot mostly in 1993–1994 in villages of Eastern and Southern China. Delving into the common lore of the remote origins of China’s civilizations, the film takes the notion of harmony in China as a site of creative manifestation, summing up three main relations: harmony with society; harmony with nature; and harmony with oneself.

Journeying into the wealth of China’s traditional architecture and ancient peasant societies, while exploring the hinterlands of self and other in their encounter, the film addresses the process of “harmonising” rural China, due to the country’s Great Uprooting. It seeks to engage the viewer further by asking: What exactly is disappearing? And how?

We are invited to fare between ancient wisdom, avant-garde experiment and popular folk acumen as the film taps on the rich realm of affect, featuring a multiplicity of voices (including those of writers Xiaolu Guo and Xiao Yue Shan) and narratives embedded in a rhythmic conversation between the still and moving image. Low-res images meet high philosophy and everyday time meets imperial and state time and the timelessness of cosmic harmony.

About the director:

Trinh T. Minh-ha (b. 1952, Vietnam) is a filmmaker, writer and music composer. Her works include nine feature-length films, twelve books and five large-scale multi-media installations. Over the years, her films have been given some sixty nine retrospectives.

Festival screenings and awards:

New:Vision Award at CPH:DOX
The Persistence of Vision Award at the San Francisco Film Festival
Prix Batók at the Jean Rouch Festival in Paris
The Inspiration Award at Viet Film Fest
Special Commendation London Film Festival
Presidential Award at the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland Film Festival

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