“The French and the Vietnamese came here [...] but they soon grew tired of it. There wasn’t much to do but hunt. This city is quite boring.” This observation without context from an unidentified narrator offers little more than a hint of a colonial past. Black-and-white photographs show men in pith helmets posing with a tiger they just shot. It is unclear how these hunters are connected to the plantations where dragonfruit is now cultivated at night under artificial light, watched over by drones. The connection with a nearby laboratory, where a wind turbine blade is undergoing a fatigue test, remains equally mysterious.
Making their debut as filmmakers, yietnu (Yi Zhang and Nu Ha) have a background in video installation and 3D imaging, which is clearly reflected in The Unabsorbed Past. The world they depict is surreal and still. Viewers are left to construct the story themselves from fragments of information. Yet there is a sense that the forces of past, present, and future must eventually collide. Something monumental is about to happen.
Stills
