Tóc, Giấy và Nước…

In the beginning was the night. Then come fire, water and the cave, where Mrs. Hâu was born over sixty years ago. The old woman utters these words and more in her native Ruc language before they are translated into both word and image, different semantic fields that encompass hair being sold, cows being fined, fruits being rubbed on the skin to keep leeches away, medicinal plants that cure COVID, memories of scary monkeys and the foul breath of tigers, or myths about the loss of writing. Her account is at once a cosmogony and a language lesson, a lexicon that has built a world and can keep it alive. TÓC, GIẤY VÀ NƯỚC... depicts the members of a small ethnic group in Vietnam, hunter-gatherers who lived in caves until the late 20th century and whose day-to-day reality was already explored in Trương Minh Quý’s first feature THE TREE HOUSE (2019). Mrs. Hâu now travels to Saigon for the first time to visit a granddaughter who just gave birth and to pass on her knowledge to one of her grandsons, who is struggling at home. Together with Nicolas Graux’s vibrant 16mm camerawork and Ernst Karel’s vivid sound design, Trương’s editing turns salvage ethnography into an active experience of worldmaking. (Antoine Thirion)

In the presence of Nicolas Graux und Trương Minh Quý.

Nicholas Graux: GARÇON AU DIABLE (2012, K), LA COLONIE PLATE (2013, K), PASSÉE L’AUBE (2017, K), CENTURY OF SMOKE (2019), PORCUPINE (2023, K, CO-DIRECTOR)
Trương Minh Quý: A RAW VIDEO (2012, K), SOMEONE IS GOING TO FOREST (2013, K), MARS IN THE WELL (2014, K, CO-DIRECTOR), DÉJÀ VU (2014, K), THE CITY OF MIRRORS (2015, K), HOW GREEN WAS THE CALABASH GARDEN (2016, K), THE CITY OF MIRRORS: A FICTIONAL BIOGRAPHY (2016), THE TREE HOUSE (2019), LES ATTENDANTS (2020), PORCUPINE (2023, K, CO-DIRECTOR), VIET AND NAM (2024)