Not I: Nguyen Trinh Thi’s essay films by May Adadol Ingawanij
Nguyen Trinh Thi's work uses video and photography to explore the presence of past wars and suffering in daily existence, and the materiality of their ghosts in a fast-shifting land. May Adodol Ingawanij's talk reflects on the importance of gestures, movement, and the equivocation between filmic movement and photographic stillness in Thi’s works. It does so to think through the potentiality or otherwise of the essay film. Does the concept travel well? Can the essay film be, at once, personal yet collective in its enunciation, can it be gestural rather than verbal?