film

Trinh T Minh-ha was born in Hanoi in 1972 and moved to the US in 1970, where she has built a brilliant career as a filmmaker, composer, poet, writer, literary critic and teacher in the years since, and cemented a place as one of the most important voices in independent cinema worldwide. Naked Spaces: Living is Round (1985) is her second feature and explores the rhythms of life and rituals in rural settings across six West African countries: Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Togo, Benin and Senegal. Non-linear in structure, it challenges the traditions of ethnographic cinema while its evocative images and sounds lead the viewer into the heart of usually-inaccessible corners of the African continent.

This is the first of seven Trinh T Minh-ha films to be screened at Zumzeig over the next month or so in the Sants co-op's retrospective of her work. Tickets for any four of these screenings can be purchased for €16, see the Zumzeig website for full details. The retrospective is timed to coincide with Seen But Not Seen, the first art exhibition by Trinh T. Minh-ha in Spain. It runs from now until March 1, 2026 at La Virreina, Centre de La Imatge, and is curated by Manuel Borja-Villel and Valentín Roma.