'As our globalized and westernized cultures have come to be dominated by visual media, I feel the need and responsibility as a filmmaker to resist this narrative power of the visual imagery, and look for a more balanced and sensitive approach in perceiving the world by paying more attention to aural landscapes, in line with my interests in the unknown, the invisible, the inaccessible, and in potentialities' 

- Nguyễn Trinh Thi

Comments on ‘Landscape #4’

“Beautiful and intriguing, beautiful music, intriguing form/structure/techniques, lots to think about in terms of sound as sound, sound as music, song as story, memory and the senses, memory as shared performance, and of course much more. The intersection with Christianity is of course tragic while at the same time the congregational songform has its own kind of beauty.” 

- Ernst Karel, musician, recordist, composer, teaches sonic ethnography at Harvard University

“One of things that struck me most powerfully is how the film is all about listening. The act of making the work is in itself an act of listening. Listening to the story being told by the singer, alongside the other listeners around him, but also the film itself tunes in to the musicality, rhythms, and acoustic layers of memory, time and a history of this specific location.” 

- Philippa Lovatt, lecturer at University of St. Andrews, Scotland, with research interests in sound in audio-visual media, Southeast Asian and East Asian Cinemas, Experimental Film and Documentary