In the spiral of time: conversation between Domi Olivieri and Trinh T. Minh-ha

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article consists of a conversation between dr. Domitilla (domi) Olivieri, scholar and activist, and Trinh T. Minh-ha, renowned filmmaker, writer, theorist, and professor. Through questions and answers, the piece starts with Trinh’s take on the notion of the intellectual; the dialogue then continues by traversing some of the themes and issues that characterise Trinh’s work as a filmmaker and a scholar: films as forms of political and intellectual intervention; the matter of (diasporic) communities, subjectivities, and locations; how the issue of labels and genres plays out in the film industry; the question of audiences; the film as encounter; politics of knowledge productions; matters of time and temporalities. Sustaining the conversation is also an understanding that Trinh’s films do not only address issues of (trans)national movements, encounters, technologies, poetry, and rhythms of lives, but they also enact and perform those very movements. Finally, the article discusses Trinh’s legacies as feminist and postcolonial practices, and the role of criticism and (non)knowing in her work across genres and registers of filmmaking that are complex and poetic, as well as strongly political.