BIOGRAPHY

 

 

  Born in Vietnam, Trinh T. Minh-ha is a filmmaker, writer and composer. Her works include:

Films

  • Forgetting Vietnam (90 mins, Digital, 2015)
  • Night Passage (98mins, Digital, 2004) (fiction)
  • The Fourth Dimension (87 mins, Digital, 2001)
  • A Tale of Love (108 mins, 1995) (fiction)
  • Shoot for the Contents (102 mins, 1991)
  • Surname Viet Given Name Nam (108 mins, 1989)
  • Naked Spaces - Living is Round (135 mins, 1985)
  • Reassemblage (40 mins, 1982) 

Books

  • D-Passage. The Digital Way (Duke University Press, 2013)
  • Elsewhere, Within Here. Immigration, Refugeeism and The Boundary Event (Routledge 2010)
  • The Digital Film Event (Routledge 2005)
  • Cinema Interval (Routledge 1999)
  • Drawn from African Dwellings (in coll. with Jean-Paul Bourdier, Indiana University Press 1996)
  • Framer Framed (Routledge 1992)
  • When the Moon Waxes Red. Representation, gender and cultural politics (Routledge 1991)
  • Out There: Marginalisation in Contemporary Culture (Co-editor with Cornel West, R. Ferguson & M. Gever. New York: New Museum of Contemporary Art and M.I.T. Press, 1990)
  • Woman, Native, Other. Writing postcoloniality and feminism (Indiana Universty Press 1989)
  • En minuscules (book of poems, Edition Le Meridien 1987)
  • African Spaces - Designs for Living in Upper Volta (in coll. with Jean-Paul Bourdier, Holmes & Meier 1985)
  • Un art sans oeuvre (International Book Publishers, Inc. 1981)

 Installations

  • Old Land New Waters, Okinawa Fine Arts Museum (opening) November 2007; (exhibition) 2009 and Guangzhou Art Triennial, China (Sept 6 to Nov 16, 2008).
  • L’ Autre marche (The Other Walk) In collaboration wth Jean Paul Bourdier, Musée du Quai Branly, Paris, France 9 June 2006 -2009
  • The Desert is Watching (in coll. with Jean-Paul Bourdier, 2003, Kyoto Art Biennale)
  • Nothing But Ways (in coll. with L. M. Kirby, 1999, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco)

 Music

  • Poems. Composition for Percussion Ensemble. Premiere by the Univ. of Illinois Percussion Ensemble, Denis Wiziecki, Director. 09 April 1976.
  • Four Pieces for Electronic Music. 1975 Performances at the Univ. of Illinois.

The recipient of numerous awards and grants (including the "Trailblazers" Award at MIPDOC, Cannes; AFI National Independent Filmmaker Maya Deren Award, fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment of the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation, the American Film Institute, The Japan Foundation, and the California Arts Council), her films have been given over fifty retrospectives in the US, the UK, Brazil, Canada, Italy, Korea, Spain, the Netherlands, Slovenia, France, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Japan, India, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Jerusalem, and were exhibited at the international contemporary art exhibition Documenta 11 (2002) in Germany. They have shown widely in the States, in Canada, Senegal, Australia, and New Zealand, as well as in Europe and Asia (including in Italy, Belgium, Spain, Sweden, Finland, Japan, India, Taiwan, Jerusalem, Reassemblage was exhibited at The New York Film Festival (1983) and has toured the country with the Asian American Film Festival among other festivals. Naked Spaces received the Blue Ribbon Award for Best Experimental Feature at the American Int'l. Film Festival and the Golden Athena Award for Best Feature Documentary at the Athens International Film Festival in 1986; it toured nationally and internationally with the 1987 Biennial of the Whitney Museum of American Art. Surname Viet Given Name Nam has received the Merit Award from the Bombay International Film Festival, the Film as Art Award from the Society for the Encouragement of Contemporary Art (SF Museum of Modern Art) and the Blue Ribbon Award at the American Film and Video Festival. Shoot for the Contents won the Jury's Best Cinematography Award at the 1992 Sundance Film Festival and the Best Feature Documentary Award at the Athens International Film Festival, and toured internationally with the 1993 Biennale of the Whitney Museum. A Tale of Love showed internationally in over twenty-four film festivals, including Berlin and Toronto. The Fourth Dimension (Locarno, Viennale, Edinburg, London) and Night Passage continue to exhibit widely (UK, Austria, Spain, Japan, Korea, Shanghai).

Trinh Minh-ha has traveled and lectured extensively—in the States, as well as in Europe, Asia, Australia and New Zealand—on film, art, feminism, and cultural politics. She taught at the National Conservatory of Music in Dakar, Senegal (1977-80); at universities such as Cornell, San Francisco State, Smith, and Harvard, Ochanomizu (Tokyo), Ritsumeikan (Kyoto), Dongguk (Seoul); and is Professor of Gender & Women's Studies and of Rhetoric at the University of California, Berkeley.