Trinh T. Minh-ha: Reassemblage

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Trinh T. Minh-ha, "Reassemblage (film still)," 1982

Courtesy of Women Make Movies.

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.