Trinh T. Minh-ha frames 'The Undying Desert' as a spiritual dialogue with Native American life rather than a colonial observation, positioning it as a long-overdue return to her home soil.
Insiders reveal Minh-ha’s radical stance: when producers or programmers ask if her work is fiction or documentary, she tells them to ask, 'Why do you need to know?' She admits that even after decades, industry gatekeepers are not immediately interested in her uncategorizable style.
1. She confirmed editing is finished at the Ji.hlava Documentary Film Festival. 2. She has been shooting in the Great Basin Desert for almost two decades. 3. She is already co-directing a sequel with Jean-Paul Bourdieu about Mars colonization groups.
Trinh T. Minh-ha isn't just making a movie; she's dragging the entire documentary establishment into the desert to teach them how to see. The receipts show she’s been there longer than most critics have been alive.
Listen up, because the most stubborn, brilliant, and uncompromising voice in independent cinema is finally pointing her camera at home. Vietnamese-American filmmaker Trinh T. Minh-ha has just wrapped editing on "The Undying Desert," her first feature set in the United States, and she’s dropping the news with the casual confidence of someone who knows she’s been right all along. Speaking at the Ji.hlava Documentary Film Festival, where she’s currently basking in a career retrospective, Minh-ha admitted that people had been asking for this for years. "I’ve made films in Africa, China, Vietnam and Japan, and people would ask: ‘When are you going to make a film about the U.S.?’ They were right, because I live there," she told Variety. It’s a rare admission from an artist who usually deflects personal questions, but this time, the geography demands attention. The drama here isn’t a scandal; it’s a two-decade-long standoff between Minh-ha and the concept of "arid." She has been shooting in the Great Basin Desert for almost twenty years, dismantling the colonial narrative that deserts are empty, dead spaces. "A desert is huge, majestic and beautiful. At the same time, it’s considered ‘arid’ by colonizing forces. All these prejudices about what a desert is still exist in our language. But it’s actually very lively," she stated. The film examines the radical disconnect between how indigenous communities view the land and how outsiders consume it. While Native Americans see "layers and layers of life" where ancestors remain present, Minh-ha notes that many visitors just use the terrain for sports. "They’re there, but they are not with the desert," she said, highlighting the spiritual void of recreational tourism. She argues that the desert wipes away notions that force us to conform, allowing people to be with their true selves. But if you think she’s resting on her laurels, you’re dreaming. Minh-ha is already deep into the next project, co-directed with longtime collaborator Jean-Paul Bourdieu, which takes the desert’s strangeness to a new extreme. She’s documenting groups who isolate themselves in the Great Basin to turn it into a research center for Mars colonization. "With every one of these trips to the desert, I could see myself changing. I was learning how I feel and what the desert actually brings me," she revealed. This isn’t just observational; it’s a personal transformation captured on film. She’s challenging the very definition of cinema, arguing that it’s an experience for the whole body, not just the eyes. When a viewer once told her they were "hearing this film with my eyes and seeing it with my ears," Minh-ha’s response was a simple, perfect: "Perfect." The real tea, however, is in her defiance of industry labels. Minh-ha openly acknowledges that producers and programmers are still not "immediately interested" in her work because she refuses to categorize it as strictly fiction or documentary. "You set up the rules for yourself," she told emerging filmmakers, warning them that while leeway has increased, responsibility has too. She challenges the audience to ask "Why do you need to know?" when pressed for genre. In an industry obsessed with marketable boxes, Trinh T. Minh-ha is burning the boxes and watching them turn to ash in the Great Basin. She’s building her audience one stubborn, poetic frame at a time, and frankly, we’re lucky to be watching.
