Vietnam the Movie by Trinh Thi Nguyen examines how global cinema has shaped our understanding of Vietnam's history. Into The Violet Belly by Thuy-Han Nguyen-Chi transforms personal exodus into digital mythology through a unique mother-daughter collaboration.

The films explore the aftermath of war through both personal and collective experiences. How has displacement shaped both identity and collective historical understanding for multiple generations? How can we understand this historical moment through lived experience, mythological reinterpretation, and mediated representation?

Vietnam the Movie uses a carefully structured montage of clips from drama and documentary films to give a chronological account of Vietnamese history from the mid-1950s to the late 1970s, encompassing the end of French colonialism and America’s involvement in the Vietnam War. But this is no conventional history lesson. Rather, the excerpts chosen contrast a variety of external and often oppositional views, ranging from mainstream Hollywood drama to European art-house. Source material from the US includes Apocalypse Now, Born on the Fourth of July and Forrest Gump, whilst Europe is represented by the works of Harun Farocki, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Werner Herzog and Jean-Luc Godard. Director Nguyễn Trinh also splices extracts from the films of Nagisa Oshima, Satyajit Ray and Ann Hui into the mix. The result suggests that any ‘true’ picture of Vietnam has been lost to the multiplicity of symbolic purposes to which the country, its people and their tribulations have been put.

Thuy-Han Nguyen-Chi's film Into the Violet Belly is a striking work blending family lore, mythology, science fiction, and digital abstraction. The film captures the experimental collaboration between the artist and her mother, Thuyen Hoa, who survived a perilous sea journey while fleeing Vietnam after the end of the American War. The film oscillates seamlessly between multiple voices, visual registers, and timescales,—was it seven months or seven thousand years?—creating an image of multitudes: migrating bodies swimming in an infinite blue, depicted as both a massive digital swarm and tiny avatars.

Thuy-Han Nguyen-Chi is a Milky Way-based artist whose practice mutates in and out of film, sculpture, installation, performance, and interdisciplinary research. Collaborating with characters in search of consciousness, language, and freedom, her recent body of work explores the aesthetic, political, and epistemological possibilities of image and sound.

Her work has been presented in both the art and cinema context, including Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin; Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul; Villa Medici, Rome; Whitechapel Gallery, London; Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival; New York Film Festival; Reykjavík International Film Festival; Singapore International Film Festival; among other spaces. Forthcoming exhibitions include Carpenter Center at Harvard University, Cambridge; Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center, New York; and Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art. In 2023, she was included among the 20 New Talents in Art in America, nominated for the New:Vision Award1, and awarded the Jury Grand Prix2 and Golden Lola3 for Into The Violet Belly. Having studied Fine Arts at the Städelschule and Film at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, she is currently a PhD researcher at the Centre for Research and Education in Art and Media, the University of Westminster.

On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the film Fear Eats the Soul (1974, Rainer Werner Fassbinder), Kunstnernes Hus Cinema is placing a special focus on xenophobia, racism, and discrimination. Through the film series Fear Eats the Soul, we will explore how migration and migration experiences have been depicted in cinema over the past decades, as well as the diversity of expressions that address these themes. Throughout the fall, there will be an extensive discursive program featuring film screenings, discussions, and lectures.

The series is supported by The Norwegian Film Institute.