Surname Viet Given Name Nam

In Surname Viet Given Name Nam, Trinh takes interviews of Vietnamese women from postwar Vietnam that have been translated into French and published and brings the interviewees to life on screen through American Vietnamese actors, who reenact the interviews in English. This process exposes the differences between the actual interviews and the reenacted interviews; documentary and fiction; the Vietnamese, French, and English languages; newsreels images and Vietnamese women’s speeches and songs; visual aspects and aural aspects; and spoken and written languages. The speech and the identity of Vietnamese women that have previously been captured and regulated by the gaze of power (West, patriarchy, and the state) escape sporadically through these gaps. (Busan International Film Festival)