Diana Cam Van Nguyen

Love, Dad
2021, Film, 12:46 min.

The film Love, Dad is another example of how the personal can be intertwined with the social in a work of art. In her film, the Czech-born artist, born to parents of Vietnamese descent, comes to terms with her longing for love and recognition. She combines the letters her father wrote to her from prison when she was a child with the feelings of disappointment and disrespect she received when her father returned from prison. While the letters are full of tenderness and love, their relationship changes upon his return as her father cannot come to terms with the fact that he has not had a boy to carry on the family line, as Vietnamese cultural tradition demands. The pressure is so strong that the father leaves the family and starts a new one. The author deals with this situation with humour in a skilfully animated film and raises questions about the prejudices against women rooted in cultural traditions.

Diana Cam Van Nguyen (*1993, Czech Republic) is a film director of Vietnamese background. She graduated from the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (FAMU) in Prague. Her short films have been selected at festivals like Locarno, Toronto, Rotterdam, Annecy and IDFA. Her latest short Love, Dad (2021) was nominated for Best Short Film at the European Film Awards 2022 and won 70+ awards from international festivals including the BFI Short Film Award, Clermont-Ferrand Connexion Award, AFI Grand Jury Award, and Toronto Honorable Mention. She lives in Prague.

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Marta Popivoda

SURFACES THAT MATTER: Youth Day 1988
2022, a two-channel video installation, 20 min, in collaboration with Ana Vujanović

Marta Popivoda’s video installation is based on one of the last mass Youth Day performances in 1988, which took place at the JNA stadium in Belgrade. This performance differed significantly from the previous socialist choreographies, in which uniformed bodies fused into a collective whole. This choreography was replaced by the modern individual dance of professional dancer Sonja Vukićević. The barefoot dancer with long flowing hair fanaticised the young audience at the night-time stadium illuminated by 9,000 torches. Her dance was a symbol of individual freedom. This installation is the result of the author’s several years of study devoted to mass performances under the influence of socialist ideology and is a kind of self-reflection on the relationship of the individual to the masses. It can be understood as a look at the influence of ideology on individuality in relation to the masses or as a reflection on today’s riveting performances by pop stars.

Marta Popivoda is a filmmaker, artist, and researcher living and working between Belgrade and Berlin. Her first feature documentary, Yugoslavia, How Ideology Moved Our Collective Body, is part of the permanent collection of MoMA New York. Her second feature documentary, Landscapes of Resistance, was presented at over 50 film festivals worldwide and won around twenty awards. Popivoda’s work has been featured in major art galleries, such as Tate Modern London, MoMA New York, MAXXI Rome, M HKA Antwerp or Museum of Modern Art + MSUM Ljubljana. She received the prestigious Berlin Art Prize for visual arts from the Akademie der Künste Berlin and the Edith-Russ-Haus Award for Emerging Media Artists. Popivoda recently presented her work at the Biennale Matter of Art in Prague, the 12th Berlin Biennale, the Manifesta 14 Biennial, and the 59th Belgrade Biennale.


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Minh Thang Pham

Performance with my father
2018

For the artist Minh Thang Pham, who was born in Hai Phong to parents of Vietnamese descent, the question of cultural identity has been a central theme since the very beginning of his practice. He began learning the techniques of traditional lacquer painting as part of his year-long internship at the Huế University in Vietnam. Lacquer first appeared on objects associated with burial rites to protect them against moisture 8,000 years ago. Gradually, it became a decorative element on vessels, vases, and furniture, which were also embellished with shells, eggshells, or gold. The lacquer, which is obtained from the lacquer tree that grows in Vietnam, has become a popular artistic medium for its depth of color and brilliance due to its specific properties. Modern Vietnamese lacquer painting that emerged in the first half of the twentieth century was influenced by the French colonizers. For Minh Thang Pham, lacquer painting is a way to delve deeper into the question of one's identity through traditional and handcrafted artifacts.

Minh Thang Pham (*1996, Hai Phong) completed a study placement in Vietnam in 2023–2024, which awakened his interest in the traditional lacquer painting technique sơn mài. He is currently studying at the painting studio of the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague. He is working continuously on two long-term projects – an intimate performance with his father in which he rediscovers communication in an estranged relationship, and a painting two by three metres large that he has been working on since 2021.


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Furqat Palvan-Zade

The Ball and the Polo Stick or the Book of Ecstasy
2022, single-channel video, 23 min.

Fascination with the fifteenth-century Persian manuscript The Ball and the Polo Stick, or the Book of Ecstasy takes filmmaker and researcher Furqat Palvan-Zade on a journey across transient geographies of Central Eurasia, challenging the notion of history as something static and well-defined. While commonly associated with the European upper classes, polo originated in the nomadic spaces of Central Eurasia. The film considers this sport a metaphor for the colonial history of the last few centuries. By delving into the poetic text of the Book of Ecstasy, Palvan-Zade aims not only to make a decolonial gesture of reclaiming polo’s origins but also to narrate the stories of the violent geopolitical games played by Western superpowers in Central Eurasia. The kaleidoscope of stories unfolding around the manuscript features Sufi metaphors, imperial Russian generals, a thief-turned-oligarch, and the Karabakh horse gifted by Nikita Khruschv to Queen Elizabeth II. Unpacking these narratives, Palvan-Zade tries to provide a glimpse of the particularities and commonalities that constitute the fascinating – and sometimes absurd – mosaic of today’s world.

Furqat Palvan-Zade (*1986, Tashkent) is a curator, researcher, and filmmaker. Since 2014, he has been working on the syg.ma project, which serves as a platform for projects that map the international community of writers, activists, artists, and designers. As a filmmaker, he is involved in a project exploring the ephemeral geographies and intertwined cultures of Central Eurasia. In 2023, he started a doctoral programme in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Yale University. He lives in New Haven.