Trinh Minh-Ha’s 1983 film Reassemblage acts in two ways; firstly to communicate an understanding of people in Senegal and secondly, most importantly actually, to comment on conventional documentary methods. Just as Kiss Kiss Bang Bang participated in an auto-critique of film genres, Reassemblage participates in an auto-critique of documentary film. The difference however is that the former does so through narrative/story and the latter does so by means of enunciation/discourse. In "When I Project it is Silent" a written interview with Trinh, she describes how the “strategies of Reassemblage question the anthropological knowledge of the “other,” the way anthropologists look at and present foreign cultures through media, here film” (228).Her methods challenge audiences and filmmakers alike to broaden their scope of understanding cultures outside of the established documentary norms.
Trinh's work actually lets the viewing of this culture happen without a preconceived storyline or ideology guiding the actions of those in the film, the intentions of the music, or camera movements and angles. Her methods are free and natural. They come across as such with shots that seem too close or too far, multiple jump cuts within singular instances, silence at times, and music that matches the actions in others. Even her narration is unorthodox. She speaks softly with her words sometimes repetitive and having little to do with the actions of the film at that moment. Take this clip for instance.
Trinh says “one of the intentions of my film is to suggests that you don’t know a culture better by approaching it with an institutionalized or professionalized background” (229). As shown in this clip, would an audience really know this Senegalese culture better if they knew what each of the men were making or what the children were doing? Do descriptions of cultural artifacts make a culture? Is it possible to observe a culture and learn as much from that objective observation as one would with guided commentary and narration? These are questions that Trinh wants audiences to ask themselves before approaching documentary films. She says in the clip that “reality is delicate” and there is a “habit of imposing a meaning to every single sign”. Perhaps her unfamiliar methods seek to avoid attaching a prescribed meaning to the culture that accompanies traditional documentary strategies.
In order to free audiences from the customary ethnographic expectations, they must first understand that there is more than one way to view and understand a culture. Much knowledge about both these Senegalese people and documentary discourse can be gained from watching this film. Experimental discourse, like that which Reassemblage exhibits, may be the only way to accomplish the goal of demonstrating the usefullness of, and increasing the receptiveness of documentary films that do not follow conventional methods.
