misunderstood. Then unexpectedly, the film started being picked up simultaneously in diverse places. Viewers were bewildered but enthusiastic. This unanticipated circulation of the film continues to expand. A somewhat similar process happened with
. Although the film got to be shown almost immediately to some packed audiences, the disappointment from those who came expecting another
was quite apparent. Most of the praise and positive reactions I obtained in the first few months were from people who had not seen
. One sympathetic viewer at a festival told me that when she shared with others her admiration for the film, she was told that she should see
first before offering any comment.
had become a model! And yet, since then, I have had very, very moving and elating feedback on
sometimes well beyond any expectations I had for that film.
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Was the objection some people had to
the fact that it is less overtly feminist than
that it doesn't put the role of women in African cultures in the foreground as obviously as the earlier film.
I don't think so. The most obvious problem people have with
is the length. The notion of time and of duration are worked on in a way that makes the experience quite excruciating for some. Time not only as the result of editing, but time made apparent within the frame itself by the camera's slow unstable movement across people and their spaces, by the quiescence and contemplative quality of many of the scenes shown, and moreover by the lack of a central story line or guiding message. Moviegoers do not mind sitting a couple of hours for a narrative feature. But to go through two hours and fifteen minutes of a nonaction film with no love story, no violence, and 'no sex' (as a viewer reminded me) is a real trial for many and a 'far out,' unforgettable experience for others. It was important for me, on the one hand, to bring back a notion of time in Africa that never failed to frustrate foreigners eager to consume the culture at a time-is-money pace (one of them warned a newcomer: 'You need immense, unlimited patience here!
). On the other hand, it was also critical to bring about a different way of experiencing film.
Some of the objections to
also have to do with the fact that certain viewers prefer the overt politics of
.
seems to appeal to people who are aware of the predicament of dwelling in modern society and are tuned to the inseparable questions of aesthetics, spirituality, sociality, and environment. I have had, for example, intense and exalted feedback from a few native-American viewers. I could never have anticipated this when I made the film.
For a while, I didn't quite know how to locate some of the hostilities toward
although in making it, I was well aware of the risks that it was taking and the kind of difficulties it might encounter. Now that I have participated in more public debates on the film than I could ever have wished, I can identify two kinds of viewers who have problems with it. Actually, the problems are fundamentally related. These are the viewers who either feel antagonistic toward the feminist struggle, or are simply unaware of its complexities in relation to other struggles of liberation. Many of these viewers may think of themselves as pro-feminist, but they are not really into the feminist struggle, and this slips out in the questions they raise, in the lack of concern they show for any earnest inquiry into gender politics.
There are other viewers who identify themselves as belonging to the antiwar movement and who do not really see
(just as many male radicals in the sixties could not take seriously their female
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co-workers and the feminist struggle that was burgeoning independently right in the midst of their struggle for freedom of speech). These viewers tend to deny, or worseto
entirelythe question of gender by constantly casting the Vietnam reality back into the binary mold of communism and anticommunism. They also seem to be preoccupied with what they militated for, eager to preserve an idealized image of a Vietnam they supported, and unwilling to look at the actual situation of postrevolutionary Vietnam. As with many libertarian movements, there are people who are genuinely fighting for change and remain sensitive to the complexities of the feminist struggle, and there are those who only work to consolidate a position of authority and feel threatened by any form of resistance other than the one they are familiar with. Right now in Vietnam, the leaders are acknowledging some of the failures of the system and are raising questions pertaining to the transformation of socialist society. But even when the people who are directly involved see the necessity for change, you have people from the outside still holding fast to a past image of Vietnam, where for example, all the women involved in the revolution are upheld as 'heroines.' The work of critical inquiry cannot be content with fixed anti-positions, which were, in their own time, necessary in regard to the war in Vietnam but need to be problematized in the context of contemporary histories of political migration.
The struggle will never end, and we women still have a long way to go. The more I discuss these questions, the more I realize how little is known of the historical debates within the feminist struggle, not to mention the Sisyphean efforts of women of color across nations to expose the politics of gender within revolutionary movements.
