This is not A Love Song
17 Mar – 03 Apr 2022
Streaming online on website Như Trăng Trong Đêm website
From the organizer:
Forward, backward. Outward, inward. Caved in, pumped up. Leaping over, crawling under. Clashes and caresses. A horde and one pal. Stillness and frenzied flutters. A voice and a chorus. Unhurriedly – horizon unrolls, height outstretches. The same street, the same house, same floor, same corner. A flourishing body of moving images, seeking the rhythms to its own choreography.
With films and moving image works by Moi Tran, Đỗ Văn Hoàng, Eduardo Williams, Phạm Ngọc Lân, Nguyễn Ngọc Thảo Ly, Nguyễn Đức Huy.
The project has been developed with the support of British Council in Vietnam (via the Digital Arts Showcasing initiative)
Streaming schedule:
From 17 Mar: I FORGOT! + FALSE BRILLANTE
From 20 Mar: SABRE DANCE UPON MONITOR + MEMORY LANE
From 23 Mar: CARDIO EXERCISE
From 26 Mar: THIS IS SINH TỪ STREET
From 29 Mar: THE BOLERO EFFECT
Line-up
Beat 1
I FORGOT!, Eduardo Williams, 2014, 28’59
Climb up, let’s jump, the fields are green and the houses are grey. We’re all small. It feels like the pores of my skin have become gigantic.
FALSE BRILLANTE, Đỗ Văn Hoàng, 2016, 22’23
A lovesick guy who wants to turn into a tree. He looks for water. He looks for a place to stand. He discovers his other identity.
Beat 2
SABRE DANCE UPON MONITOR, Phạm Ngọc Lân, 2012, 3’
An odd story, in which the old monitor is dragged around the precinct of an old French building while screening some ‘breaking television’ footage from Youtube.
MEMORY LANE, Nguyễn Ngọc Thảo Ly, 2019, 22’59
Two elder Tuồng actors, husband and wife, reenact classical excerpts of old days. These performances are often interrupted, as memory waxes and wanes…
Beat 3
CARDIO EXERCISE, Nguyễn Đức Huy, 2022, 4’07
A person jumping ropes against different backdrops in the same house, meanwhile, there seems to exist other presences.
Beat 4
THIS IS SINH TỪ STREET, a series of film by Đỗ Văn Hoàng, 2022
“This is Sinh Từ Street, sounding almost like Sinh Tử (Birth and Death) Street…” Over the year in which the city faced a pandemic, the filmmaker set out to record, edit, and refine his works all by himself, within the confines of a rented apartment. To film is to carry on.
Beat 5
THE BOLERO EFFECT, Moi Tran, 2020
In November 2019, Moi Tran staged the immersive-theatre piece The Bolero Effect inside a house in Hanoi. Thematically/melodically inspired by nhạc vàng’s heritage, the piece explores themes of communication, reconciliation and emotional reckoning. It assesses our attempts to understand the world and the human condition. This filmic version, filmed inside the same house across 12 chapters/spaces, captures the essence of the performances.
* All films screen with English subtitles
About the directors
Born in Vietnam, Moi Tran is an artist based in the UK with training and background in Fine Art and Theatre. Her multidisciplinary practice as Artist, Researcher, Performance Maker and Designer explores the intersections between Contemporary Art and Live Performance. Through a research-based practice she creates live performance, video, object making, music, text and installation to examine the way social, ecological and political technologies shape our private, social and geographical identities. Collaboration and examinations of a common emotional vocabulary underpin her work. In 2019, she realized The Bollero Effect, a performance in Ha Noi.
Đỗ Văn Hoàng was born in Hai Phong. He graduated from the University of Theatre and Cinema at Hanoi. His short documentaries and short films include: Underneath it All (documentary), At Water’s Edge (documentary), A Film on Sofa (short film), A Silent Shout (short film), False Brillante (short film), and Drowning Dew (a collaboration with Art Labor Collective), and they have been shown at Hanoi Docfest, Yamagata Film Festival, Centre Pompidou, Times Museum Guangzhou.
Eduardo Williams (born 1987) is an Argentine film director. He first studied at Universidad del Cine in Buenos Aires, and then in Fresnoy, France. Some of his notable works include: Pude Ver Un Puma (20110, That I’m Falling? (2013), I forgot! (2014), Parsi (2018), No Es (2019). His first feature film The Human Surge won Golden Leopard – Filmmakers of the Present in the Locarno Film Festival in 2016.
Phạm Ngọc Lân was born and raised in Hanoi. He rarely left the city (both in reality and his imagination) until college. The artist graduated with a degree in urban planning and is a self-taught filmmaker, his works have been shown in both museums and prestigious film festivals.
Nguyễn Ngọc Thảo Ly is a young filmmaker based in Hanoi. She participated in filmmaking programmes by TPD, Hanoi Doclab and Varan Vietnam. Some of her notable works include: Rito rito (2016), Nude (2019), Ngõ Nghệ Sĩ (2019), Sáng-Chiều-Cuối Tháng (2019), Giữa Dòng Phù Sa (2020). Ngõ Nghệ Sĩ won TPD’s Golden Lotus Bud Award for best documentary in 2019.
Nguyễn Đức Huy (b. 1995), is a visual artist. Huy studied at the Vietnam University of Fine Art. Selected group exhibitions in Hanoi include Hobbling Pedestrian & Emerging artists 5 (Nhà Sàn Collective), Second Opinion & Virtual Private Realms (Manzi Art Space). Đức Huy’s videos have a unique visual idiosyncrasy, vibrant colors, a sense of humour, yet accompanied by an underlying state of confusion and disorientation.
The screening forms part of Như Trăng Trong Đêm (Like the Moon in a Night Sky: A Perspective of Vietnamese Cinema), a series of events exploring Vietnamese cinema past, present and future, a pathway from today into film heritage.
Như Trăng Trong Đêm 3 takes place between 09 Mar – 03 Apr 2022, and is organised by Centre for Assistance & Development of Movie Talents (TPD), in close cooperation with Institut français de Hanoi – L’Espace, and with the support of the Japan Foundation Center for Cultural Exchange in Vietnam, Purin Pictures, UNESCO Office in Vietnam (via the #hanoirethink project), Vietnam Film Institute, British Council in Vietnam (via the Digital Arts Showcasing fund), COMPLEX 01, Union Hub, Tách Spaces
Follow updates on event’s page.
