Naked Spaces—Living Is Round
directed by Trinh T. Minh-ha (16mm, 1985, 135 mins)
Wednesday, February 8, 7pm
"Naked Spaces surveys the integration of ritual and work, the home and the world, culture and nature, in the traditional villages of six West African countries (Senegal, Mauritania, Togo, Mali, Burkina Faso, and Benin). Over the course of its two-hour-plus running time, the film effortlessly attests to the rich variety of the region's indigenous architecture. Trinh documents adobe cities and stilt-set river towns, villages nestled in the rocks and settlements splayed out across the bush, turreted straw houses and domelike huts. Each dwelling has its own blend of environmental logic and irrational splendor—simultaneously, as Trinh puts it, 'a tool, a sanctuary, and a work of art.'
Fittingly, considering her subject matter, Trinh's images are as unpretentious as home movies—exhibiting the same gorgeous overexposures, casual jump cuts, and, at times, jarring incompletion. Just as some shots refuse to take possession of their subject, Trinh's narrative declines to generalize about the Other (nor does she present her film as a unified whole). Not only is her use of sound purposefully erratic, there are times in Naked Spaces when representation decomposes into isolated details and pure sensation. More than a mosaic of impressions, however, the film is nonlinear, decentered, and deliberately unsettling.
Like Reassemblage, Naked Spaces sets out to challenge and criticize—not to mention derange—the conventions of ethnographic film."
- J. HobermanAdmission: $7, available at door
Seating is limited. First-come, first-served. Box office opens at 6:30.
Light Industry
155 Freeman Street, Brooklyn
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