What About China?

Trinh T. Minh-ha / United States, China / 2021 / 135 min.

synopsis

What are we losing from our past as we forget? And what traces of a past that has almost vanished do we still find today in music or folk myths? This documentary presents China as a complex mosaic of people, customs and stories that defies simple interpretation. Through footage of the country’s rural areas filmed in the 1990s, alongside narration, poetry and music, it revisits the past while tracing its echoes in the present. Despite its emphasis on the concept of harmony, the film does not offer an idealised portrait of this Asian superpower. In its exploration of the country, it refuses to shy away from social or gender inequalities and, in an era of global transformation, turns its attention primarily to the Chinese people, including those most vulnerable.

biography

Trinh T. Minh-ha is a filmmaker, writer and composer, and Distinguished Professor of the Graduate School at the University of California, Berkeley. Her work includes nine feature-length films, which have been honored with over seventy retrospectives around the world, large-scale installations and numerous books, including Elsewhere, Within Here (2011).