Framer Framed

Framer Framedbrings together for the first time the scripts and detailed visuals of three of Trinh Minh-ha's provocative films: Reassemblage, Naked Spaces--Living is Round, and Surname Viet Given Name Nam. Offering a large selection of related interviews in which the award-winning filmmaker and theorist discusses the specifics of visual creativity and the politics of documentary practice, Framer Framedaddresses the more general questions of feminist, postcolonial, and postmodernist art and culture. Produced at the intersection of creative and critical practices, Trinh's films situate themselves in the intervals between poetry and politics, art and theory, fiction and documentary, and truth and fact. They resist the comfort of categorization, and engage the reader in a reflective process of seeing, hearing, and co-producing. This intricate tapestry of words and images weaves into its texture meditations on music, art and architecture; explorations of the materiality of film and the filmmaking process; reflections on West African cosmology and the significance of dwelling; and insights on the plight of women, of refugee, and of exile. The interviews selected contribute to politicizing the aesthetic experience; to challenging the habits of consumptive spectatorship; and to furthering the issues of representation as related to questions of gender, ethnicity, and cultural difference.