Reassemblage (1982), Trinh T. Minh-ha’s first film, is a classic of postcolonial cinema. Set in rural Senegal, the film introduces Trinh’s career-long methodology of “speaking nearby.” Throughout the work, Trinh scrutinizes the presumption of anthropological and documentary filmmakers to speak about or on behalf of their subjects, a critical lens that she also extends to “the missionary, the Peace Corps volunteer, the tourist, and last but not least at myself as onlooker.”

Cinematic techniques themselves are the subjects of Reassemblage. Treating film editing as a language, Trinh composes a rhythmic montage in which the repetition and discontinuity of audio-visual footage cohere into a new filmic genre that lies between poetry and theory, the essay and the anti-essay.

Born in Vietnam, Trinh T. Minh-ha is a filmmaker, writer and music composer. She is Distinguished Professor of the Graduate School in the departments of Gender & Women’s Studies and of Rhetoric at the University of California, Berkeley. Spanning nearly four decades, Trinh’s complex, theoretical and poetic practice includes moving image, writing, musical composition, installation, and teaching. She dedicates her practice to questioning systems of knowledge, representation and experience related to cultural identity and memory, and has made profound contributions to filmmaking as well as to the fields of postcolonial and feminist studies.

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