A Feast of Sound. Nguyễn Trinh Thi in Conversation with Hùng Dương
My first encounter with Nguyễn Trinh Thi’s work was at a live music pub in the heart of Ho Chi Minh City. Her essay film Letters from Panduranga (2015) was selected as part of the 2016 experimental screening ‘OUT OF FRAME’, organised by young film aficionados and supported by ZERO Station. Made in the form of a letter exchange between an anonymous man and woman, the film was inspired by the Vietnamese government’s plan to build the country’s first two nuclear power plants in Ninh Thuan Province, formerly known as Panduranga – the ancient Kingdom of Champa and the spiritual heart of the Indigenous Cham people, threatening the survival of this two-thousand-year old matriarchal Hindu culture. Crossing documentary and fiction, the film shifts audience attention between foreground and background, between intimate portraits and distant landscapes, offering reflections around fieldwork, ethnography, art, and the role of the artist.
