A Critical Cinema 2: Interviews with Independent Filmmakers

partly to people who come to a university department of cinema [Trinh teaches at San Francisco State University] primarily for film production. There's an antitheory tradition that runs deep among some of the "production people." I promote "bridge" courses and emphasize the indispensability of the mutual challenge of theory and practice, which can be summarized in an old statement by Marx: that theory cannot thrive without being rooted in practice, and that practice cannot liberate itself without theory. When one starts theorizing

about

film, one starts shutting, in the field; it becomes a field of experts whose access is gained through authoritative knowledge of a demarcated body of "classical" films and legitimized ways of reading and speaking about films. That's the part I find most sterile in theory. It is necessary for me always to keep in mind that one cannot really theorize about film, but only

with

film. This is how the field can remain open.

MacDonald:

The thing I find frustrating about the whole theory/practice issue as it has played itself out in the last ten or twelve years is that to make a film one has to take a chance with one's life and one's resources. It's true in Hollywood films and in independent film, where, if you're going to come up with thirty-five thousand dollars to make a movie, you have to restructure your life. You have to take a direct and dangerous part in whatever the national economy is that you live in. When I write about filmsand I don't write theory, but I think it's also true thereyou don't have to reorganize anything (at least in this country): you can remain within an institutional framework where you have a salary: you can critique without changing your life-style. I go to independent films to see what those people who are willing to put their lives on the line are able to discover. Theory can be brilliant and enlightening, but I rarely feel people's lives on the line in the same way.

Trinh:

Well, I think there's such a resistance to theory because theory is often deployed from a very safe place. And I am not even talking about the other resistance that is found within the academic system itself, where theory can threaten the status quo and a distinction could be made between intellectual activities and academicizing pursuits. But I, myself, think of theory as a practice that changes your life entirely, because it acts on your conscience. Of course, theory becomes a mere accessory to practice when it speaks from a safe place, while practice merely illustrates theory when the relationship between the two remains one of domination-submission and of totalization. I see theory as a constant questioning of the framing of consciousnessa practice capable of informing another practice, such as film production. Hence theory always has the possibility, even the probability, of leading to "dangerous" places, and vice versa. I can't separate the two. The kind of film I make requires that economically, as you point out, I readjust my life, but

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I am constantly questioning who I am, and making my films transform the way I see the world. You know, history is full of people who die for theory.

MacDonald:

Can we go back to

Naked Spaces

? How did you decide on the order of the sections? Until I went to the atlas, I thought perhaps you traveled in a circle.

Trinh:

Except for the end of the film, which leads us back to the opening sequences,

Naked Spaces

is organized in the geographical order of my itinerary: from one country, one region, to another. Each location is indicated by, having the names of the people and the country appear briefly on the screen, more as a footnote than as a name tag or a validating marker. The sound track is, however, more playful: a statement made by a member of a specific group may be repeated in geographical contexts that are different. Needless to say, this strategy has not failed to provoke hostility among "experts" on African cultures, "liberal" media specialists, and other cultural documentarians.

Apparently, some "professional" viewers cannot distinguish between a signpost, whose presence only tells you where you are, and an arrangement that suggests more than one function at work. Depending on how one uses them, letters on an image have many functions, and viewers who abide by media formulas are often insensitive to this. For me, the footnotes or the names that appear on screen allow precisely the non-expert viewer to recognize that a few selected statements issued by one source or heard in one group are repeated

across

borderlines of ethnic specificities. Thus, the names also function as acknowledgment of the strategical play of the film, my manipulations as filmmaker.