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Oct 5, 2024 at 11:30 am
Artistic Differences — Minh Quy Truong
Our monthly cineclub and podcast, hosted in-person and virtually
11 am — IRL Doors at UNDO
11:30am — Screening begins
(in-person & online)
1pm — CineClub Conversation
(in-person & online)
LOCATIONS
ARTISTIC DIFFERENCES, produced by UnionDocs and hosted by Cíntia Gil, is an online cineclub, hosted on the first Saturday of every month! Join in to add your voice to the cineclub conversations! All UnionDocs members can join in person in Ridgewood, and if you’re tuning in from afar, you can join our livestream or sign up for a link to stream on your own time.
We think of our gatherings as an open brain trust of folks from all around the world, who gather regularly to thoughtfully consider challenging documentary works and generate brave questions and candid responses that fuel dialogue around the work of some of the most poetic and powerful filmmakers exploring the documentary form today. Join us to WATCH urgent and expressive films, DISCUSS new contexts, voices, visions, and ideas across many differences, and LISTEN to open and honest conversations with the artists.
This October, we’re delighted to spotlight the work of Minh Quy Truong! In his film The Tree House (2019), we find ourselves in the year 2045, where a filmmaker on Mars tries to remember: What was home? As he speaks to his father millions of miles away in the Central Highlands of Vietnam, the present becomes past and the past is excavated in the present moment.
After our convening, we produce a longform interview with the filmmaker in question as a podcast episode. We bring to them the many questions, ideas and thoughts that emerge from our meeting with all of you. If this community-based generative format of dialogue and exchange piques your interest, join the club today!
Program
The Tree House by Trương Minh Quý
84 mins, 2019
In the year 2045, a filmmaker on Mars tries to remember: What was home? As he speaks to his father millions of miles away in the Central Highlands of Vietnam, the present becomes past and the past is excavated in the present moment. Telling the stories of the Ruc and Kor people of Vietnam, whose cave homes and tree houses were destroyed by American forces during the Vietnam War, Quý probes questions of displacement and how space holds ancestral memory. Life on Mars is never captured on camera, and we come to know the Highlands through 16mm documentary footage captured by Quý and cinematographer Son Doan, alongside American military films captured during the war.
Program Duration: 84 mins
Watch the conversation between Presenter1, Presenter2 and Presenter 3 on the UnionDocs’ Membership hub.
Bios
Minh Quy Truong was born in Buon Ma Thuot, a small city in the Central Highlands of Vietnam. Quý lives and works here and there in the vibrancy of memories and present moments, his narratives and images, lying between documentary and fiction, personal and impersonal, draw on the landscape of his homeland, childhood memories, and the historical context of Vietnam. In his films, he has experimented with combining abstract concepts-images with realistic improvisations during shooting. He is the alumnus of 2012 Asian Film Academy (Busan International Film Festival) and 2016 Berlinale Talents (Berlin International Film Festival). His films have been selected for international film festivals and exhibitions such as Locarno, New York, Clermont-Ferrand, Oberhausen, Rotterdam, Busan, Les Rencontres Internationales Paris&Berlin. He won the main Art Prize at the 20th VideoBrasil (Sao Paulo) in 2017.
His second feature film, The Tree House, premiered in 72nd Locarno Film Festival (Filmmakers of The Present Competition, Swiss Critics Boccalino Award), where it was called among “Three of the festival’s best premieres” by Mubi and “a singular entrancing ode to memory and filmmaking” by The Film Stage. The film continued to screen in 57th New York Film Festival (Projections), Viennale, Festival Des 3 Continents (Competition), Rotterdam International Film Festival (Bright Future Main Program), CPH:Dox (Artist &Auteur), Goteborg International Film Festival, and others.
Born in Portugal, Cíntia Gil studied at the Escola Superior de Teatro e Cinema (Lisbon Theatre and Film School) and holds a degree in Philosophy from the Faculdade de Letras da Universidade do Porto (Faculty of Arts and Humanities at the University of Porto), where she has also taught seminars on aesthetics. From 2012 to 2019, Cíntia Gil served as co-director and then director of Doclisboa, Portugal’s most important and steadily expanding documentary film festival, where she launched the Ibero-American lab Arché. From 2019 to 2021 she has directed Sheffield DocFest.
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