The Fourth Dimension

A film by Trinh T. Minh-ha Produced by Jean-Paul Bourdier and Trinh T. Minh-ha

US | 2001 | 87 minutes | Color | DVD | Order No. 02745

SYNOPSIS

Acclaimed filmmaker Trinh T. Minh-ha ventures into the digital realm with her stunning feature, THE FOURTH DIMENSION, an incisive and insightful examination of Japan through its art, culture, and social rituals. As is the case with Trinh's previous films, her film is a multi-layered work addressing issues around its central theme: the experience of time, the impossibility of truly "seeing," and the impact of video on image-making.

THE FOURTH DIMENSION is an elegant meditation on time, travel, and ceremony in the form of a journey. In her first foray into digital video, Minh-ha deconstructs the role of ritual in mediating between the past and the present. She explains, "Shown in their widespread functions and manifestations, including more evident loci such as festivals, religious rite and theatrical performance, 'rituals' involve not only the regularity in the structure of everyday life, but also the dynamic agents in the world of meaning." With its lush imagery, Minh-ha's Japan is viewed through mobile frames, with doors and windows sliding shut, revealing new vistas as it blocks out the old light.

“Trinh T. Minh-ha’s newest essayistic work and her first videotape, cuts an intricate key for unlocking this elusive culture. Her tack finds great visual pleasure in the everyday, composing and decomposing the social landscape, while constructing a poetic grid of temporalities, symbolic meaning, and ritual. In THE FOURTH DIMENSION, Trinh’s lyrical narration guides us through ‘Japan’s likeness,’ the perfected framing of the sacramental familiar.” - Steve Seid

PRESS

"Reminiscent of Peter Greenaway...a mesmerizing mix of fluid images and poetic narration."

John Petrakis Chicago Tribune

"Striking visual compositions and juxtapositions, a stunning sound design and an incisive voiceover...[She] engages us in a profound and deeply satisfying dialogue with our own preconceptions and desires, and encourages new ways of seeing."

Irina Leimbacher Release Print

SCREENING HIGHLIGHTS AND AWARDS

  • London International Film Festival
  • Vienna International Film Festival
  • Edinburgh International Film Festival
  • New York Asian American Int'l Film Festival
  • Museum of Modern Art, New York
  • New York Video Festival
  • Graz Biennale, Austria
  • Dig.It Digital Film Festival, Walker Art Center
  • Toronto Asian American Int'l Film Festivals
  • Festival International del Film Locarno, Switzerland
  • International Film Festival of New Film/Splitski Filmski Festival
  • Taiwan Women Make Waves Film & Video Festival
  • Seoul Net Festival
  • VOID Art Gallery, Ireland

ABOUT FILMMAKER(S)

Trinh T. Minh-ha

TRINH T. MINH-HA
Born in Vietnam, Trinh T. Minh-ha is a filmmaker, writer and music composer. Her works include:

Films::
WHAT ABOUT CHINA? (135 mins digital film, 2021)
FORGETTING VIETNAM (90 mins digital film, 2015)
NIGHT PASSAGE (98mins digital narrative film, 2004)
THE FOURTH DIMENSION (Japan, 87 mins digital film, 2001)
A TALE OF LOVE (108 mins 35mm narrative, 1995)
SHOOT FOR THE CONTENTS (China, 102 mins 16mm, 1991)
SURNAME VIET GIVEN NAME NAM (108 mins 16mm, 1989)
NAKED SPACES - LIVING IS ROUND (135 mins 16mm, 1985)
REASSEMBLAGE (40 mins 16mm, 1982)

Books: including • Lovecidal. Walking with The Disappeared (2016), • D-Passage. The Digital Way (2013), • Elsewhere Within Here. Immigration, Refugeeism and The Boundary Event (2010); • The Digital Film Event (2005), • Cinema Interval (1999), • Framer Framed (1992), • When the Moon Waxes Red. Representation, Gender and Cultural politics (1991), Woman, Native, Other. Postcoloniality and Feminism (1989), • En minuscules (poems, 1987); and in collaboration with Jean-Paul Bourdier, • A World in Dwelling (2011), • Habiter un monde (Paris, 2006), • Drawn from African Dwelling (1996), •African Spaces - Designs for Living in Upper Volta (1985);
Large-scale multi-media installations: • “Nothing But Ways” (in coll. with LM Kirby, 1999, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco), • “The Desert is Watching” (2003, Kyoto Art Biennale), and • “L'Autre marche” (The Other Walk, 2006-2009 at Musée du Quai Branly, Paris, both in coll. with Jean-Paul Bourdier), • “Old Land New Waters”, Okinawa Fine Arts Museum (2007; 2009); Guangzhou Art Triennial in China (2008), Chechnya Emergency Biennale (2008), Le Quartier, Quimper, France ( 2016) , Museo Revoltella, Trieste, Italy (2018), and • “In Transit: Between and Beyond” (in coll. with LM Kirby, Manifesta 13, Marseille, France 2020).

The recipient of numerous awards and grants (including the 2014 Wild Dreamer Lifetime Achievement Award from the Subversive Festival in Zagreb, Croatia; the 2012 Women's Caucus for Art Lifetime Achievement Award; the "Trailblazers" Award at MIPDOC, Cannes; AFI National Independent Filmmaker Maya Deren Award, her films have been honored in over 64 retrospectives-in Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Singapore, Korea, Austria, Denmark, Sweden, Argentina, Croatia, Columbia, Mexico, Finland, Brazil, Canada, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Slovenia, France, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Japan, India, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Australia, the UK, the US—and were exhibited at the international contemporary art exhibition Documenta 11 (2002) in Germany. They have shown widely in the States, in Canada, Senegal, Australia, and New Zealand, as well as in Europe and Asia. Reassemblage was initially exhibited at The New York Film Festival (1983) and has since then become a classic of critical ethnographic films. Naked Spaces received the Blue Ribbon Award for Best Experimental Feature at the American Int'l. Film Festival and the Golden Athena Award for Best Feature Documentary at the Athens International Film Festival in 1986; it toured nationally and internationally with the 1987 Biennial of the Whitney Museum of American Art. Surname Viet Given Name Nam has received the Film as Art Award from the Society for the Encouragement of Contemporary Art (SF Museum of Modern Art), the Blue Ribbon Award at the American Film and Video Festival, and the Merit Award from the Bombay International Film Festival. Shoot for the Contents won the Jury's Best Cinematography Award at the 1992 Sundance Film Festival and the Best Feature Documentary Award at the Athens International Film Festival, and toured internationally with the 1993 Biennale of the Whitney Museum. A Tale of Love showed internationally in over twenty-four film festivals, including Berlin and Toronto. The Fourth Dimension (Locarno, Viennale, Edinburg, London), Night Passage (UK, Austria, Spain, Japan, Korea, Shanghai) and Forgetting Vietnam (Cinéma du Réel, Paris; Copenhagen; Singapore; Taiwan; Sweden; Vancouver and Montreal, Canada etc.) continue to exhibit widely.

Trinh Minh-ha has traveled and lectured extensively on film, art, feminism, and cultural politics. She taught at the National Conservatory of Music in Dakar, Senegal (1977-80); at universities such as Cornell, San Francisco State, Smith, and Harvard, Ochanomizu (Tokyo), Ritsumeikan (Kyoto), Dongguk (Seoul); and is Professor of The Graduate School at the University of California, Berkeley. (4/22)

Jean-Paul Bourdier

Jean-Paul Bourdier is a French born photographer of unique style, skilled passion and compelling imagination. His images balance across the nexus of multiple crafts – among them painting, poetry, and performance art. He is the author of "Leap into the Blue," and "Bodyscapes," (co -authored by Trinh T. Minh), and has won the Guggenheim, American Council of Learned Societies, NEA, Graham, UC President’s Humanities and Getty awards. He is also a Professor of Architecture, Photography and Visual Studies at UC Berkeley and has worked as a production designer for seven films, co - directing two with Trinh Minh. Bourdier. (01/20)

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