Reassemblage

Reassemblage by Trinh Minh ha is another film that breaks the traditional ideas of film, specifically for documentaries. Trinh Minh ha used a different topic to express her distaste or problems with documentaries. In this case, at first glance it seems as if she is making a documentary about a village and their way of life, but takes it a different way. She does a minimal explanation through out with a lot of random pauses. The pauses were personally a bit annoying to me because of the expectations that modern film has created for me. The pauses in my opinion help prove her point in the idea that documentaries are not always has truthful as they always are. The pauses allows us to see a more "natural" look at the people versus having the voice over telling us to believe. Honestly, even just the raw footage is bits and pieces so we can not always get the full idea from it.

Comments

  1. UnknownApril 18, 2021 at 9:50 AM

    Xander, the way you described your first experiences of Trinh T. Minh-ha's 1982 documentary "Reassemblage" are vulnerable and fresh. It truly is a different world of film from a Western perspective, I fully agree. The natural lens that viewers are provided encompasses a surprising look at this Senegalese village. The little that we can understand about this community is the developed daily routine. We truly cannot get the whole idea of Senegalese life, but it was enlightening to view some functions of their lives. Thank you for your insightful blog post!

    Delilah Rose

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  2. astra medeirosApril 18, 2021 at 2:51 PM

    The sound in this film is so peculiar for those of us who are always being fed narrative styles, even in documentary. I believe Minh-ha wanted her audience to be annoyed in a way. But we are very familiar with always having sound bombard us in films, but in a strange way our senses are rarely left with nothing in this experimental documentary.

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  3. Michael ZhangApril 18, 2021 at 7:39 PM

    I can totally relate that modern film has shaped our taste from many perspectives, so I don't like this documentary either. The pauses and the silence can help create some unique sense of being an observer, proving that the footage is authentic. However, if this documentary can a least have some kind of explanation, we could probably relate more to it.

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  4. charlieJune 1, 2021 at 9:29 AM

    Yes I agree, although I found the movie interesting to watch at first and even found the audio slightly soothing I still found myself getting very bored with the movie. I didnt have as much of a problem with the pauses as i did with the whole concept. I just dont understand why or how the movie was as long as it was.

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