A Critical Cinema 2: Interviews with Independent Filmmakers

At the end of the film, just before we see the wrap party, Yvonne asks Jenny, "So, did you ever make it with Brenda?" and Jenny says, "Hell, no! I was terrified of women." That, the two women in bed in the one dream, and a textual statement (it's quoted in one of the stills

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From Rainer's

Privilege

 (1990).

you made for

Privilege

)"The most remarkable thing was the silence that emanated from friends and family regarding details of my single middleage. When I was younger, my sex life had been the object of all kinds of questioning, from prurient curiosity to solicitous concern. Now that I did not appear to be looking for a man, the state of my desires seemed of no interest to anyone"leads to my last question: What is the state of your desires?

Rainer:

I've become a lesbian.

MacDonald:

Ah.

Rainer:

I mean I can only say that now because I'm deeply involved with someone. But for the last five years it's been on my mind. I've gone through these backbends to find some way of describing a state of nonactive, unrealized sexual identity. I did a lecture in Australia where I called myself "a lapsed heterosexual" and an "a-woman" and "a political lesbian." At the level of politics, and emotion, my empathy was with lesbians. But I was settling into a celibate life. I didn't know how to proceed.

That's something I want to learn more about in my next film. I want to interview lesbians who

became

lesbians in middle age. That's the stereotype: a woman is not wanted by men anymore; therefore, she turns to women.

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MacDonald:

That's a stereotype I've not heard, actually.

Rainer:

Oh? It's in the culture. I don't think I invented it, and I really want to investigate it:

Is

it a stereotype?

Privilege

does raise all the stereotypes about desirability and women getting "old" before men get "old," and the old maid stereotype.

MacDonald:

I guess the stereotype I've heard is that old maids are lesbians whether they know it or notthough I'm certainly not in touch with the conventional stereotyping of lesbians.

Rainer:

What's very interesting to me is that the instant you get involved with someone of your own sex, it's like crossing the Rubicon! I mean, suddenly, I'm not a "political lesbian" (well, I

am

a political lesbian), I'm lesbian. I felt I couldn't

say

that before, which was odd, because years ago, there was a time I couldn't say I was a feminist because I thought, "Oh a feminist is a political

activist,

not just someone who makes art." I got past that, and have been an avowed feminist for years.

You know, this is the first time I've uttered all this. No one has asked me directly.

MacDonald: Privilege

gave me the sense you wanted to be asked, but I wasn't sure I'd have the nerve to ask you.

Rainer:

I'm glad you did. It's the beginningfor meof talking about it. Which means the beginning of fomenting a film.

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Trinh T. Minh-ha

For Trinh T. Minh-ha, filmmaking has been a way of responding to the multicultural perspective she has developed as a result of growing up in Vietnam during the American military presence there and her subsequent experiences as teacher, writer, and artist in France, the United States, and in a variety of West African societies. At the time this interview was recorded, Trinh had completed three films: two

Reassemblage

(1982) and

Naked SpacesLiving Is Round

(1985)focus on West Africa; a third

Surname Viêt Given Name Nam

(1989)was made in the United States, about the experiences of Vietnamese women before, during, and after the recent war. Because Trinh uses a hand-held camera and a variety of other visual and auditory tactics familiar from North American and European independent cinema, her films can seem to be new instances of older critical approaches, but in fact, she accomplishes something relatively distinct. Her use of the hand-held camera in

Reassemblage

and

Naked SpacesLiving Is Round,

for example, is neither an expression of her emotions, as gestural camerawork is in such Brakhage films as

Window Water Baby Moving or Sirius Remembered

(1959), nor an expression of her understanding of some essential dimension of what she films. Rather, her seemingly awkward camera movements, and other obvious formal devices, function as a cinematic staff (in the musical sense) on which is encoded the interface between Trinh (and the cultural practices she represents/enacts)and the cultures within which she records imagery and sound.

Reassemblage

is a cine-poem, or a suite, on the theme of Senegal, focusing particularly on the everyday activities of women. It is an im-

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