cát nguyên

director: cát nguyên
writer: cát nguyên
director of photography: cát nguyên
editor: cát nguyên
sound designer: cát nguyên
lead cast: cát nguyên
vietnamese translator: linh linh thân
đàn tranh artist: cát nguyên
producer: cát nguyên
filmed in việt nam & u.s.a.

an entrancing dream-poem, Hai Bà Cháu | Grandma-Grandchild, is the lucid celestialization of the time-defying love shared by cát nguyên and their grandma.

bathing in an intergenerational dreamspace, this short film is the whimsical monsoon of a grandma’s tender and poetic presence that has emanated oceans beyond her bodily passing.

as cát nguyên caresses the very waves that both grandma and grandchild have crossed across decades, cát nguyên swims in all the blue shades of love to finally embrace, once more, and forevermore, their grandma.

Hai Bà Cháu | Grandma-Grandchild has screened at festivals, exhibitions, and events in hanoi, ho chi minh city, marseille, and minneapolis.

producers: cát nguyên & trâm anh nguyễn
director: trâm anh nguyễn
writer: cát nguyên
music composer & sound designer: trần quốc thịnh
director of photography: trâm anh nguyễn
lead cast: cát nguyên
vietnamese translator: tâm đỗ
đàn tranh artist: cát nguyên
set assistants: triết phạm & yến bùi
filmed in việt nam

what can we discover in the landscape of our bodies?

as queer trans and gender non-conforming children of the vietnamese diaspora, we are fragmented at the crossroads of being displaced from not only a sense of belonging to our ancestral land, but also our own bodies which are conditioned by society to stray away from our most authentic existence.

yet these bodies of ours are the vessels we sail to embark on a lifetime voyage of return to our original selves. it is our bodies that navigate the treacherous tides of normative systems that impose themselves on our very being. and it is our bodies that act as community lighthouses for collective liberation.

ultimately, the landscape of our bodies is our blueprint to remembering, to healing, to blooming.

Thân Thể Rừng Thiêng | Landscape of Our Body has screened at festivals, exhibitions, and events in berlin, brussels, paris, stockholm, toronto, vancouver, hanoi, and ho chi minh city.