Trinh Minh-ha is the artist in focus of Courtisane 2023. She presents her latest film What about China? (2022) An van. Dienderen was invited to introduce Trinh Minh-ha and to moderate the q&a after the screening.

With this film prominent feminist film scholar Trinh presents a hugely imaginative cultural critique of China that resists the idea of a single historical narrative, instead evoking the plurality of indigenous perspectives. Combining travelogue-style video footage shot in the 1990s during her visit to rural areas of the country, with poetry, folk songs and oral histories, the film ruminates on China in the past, present and future tenses. Weaving through the concept of harmony and memory, What about China? holds a mirror to the women and children the filmmaker encounters in their communal spaces, reflecting on what has been lost and what we are in the process of forgetting. Yet Trinh never speaks for or about her subjects – always inviting the voices of women to participate in shaping the narrative.—Hyun Jin Cho