Hamilton Professor Martine Guyot-Bender presents Samuel Aubin and his film, Khuong Mê’s Dark Room: His Life and His Work (La Chambre noire de khuong), (2002, 62 minutes). Presented in French, with English subtitles written by Professor Guyot-Bender.

Khuong Mê’s Dark Room is an attempt by documentary filmmaker and essayist Samuel Aubin’s to piece together the puzzle of Vietnamese filmmaker/propagandist Khuong Mê’s life.

During Vietnam’s struggle against French colonialist rule, and later during the Vietnam War, Khuong Mê made propaganda films supporting Vietnam’s independence. Using Khuong Mê’s own words, and images and objects collected in his apartment, Aubin works to come to grips with the puzzle of Mê’s experiences, first as a propagandist, then as a popular filmmaker with doubts about his own earlier career.

Khuong Mê’s Dark Room is a deep dive into the relationship between lived events and their filming representations, and between choices made at the time of filming and how those interpretations feel, decades later.

Coming up:
• Sunday, April 28, 2 p.m.
Hamilton professors Jason Cieply and Scott MacDonald present Sergei Loznitsa’s State Funeral (2019, 135 minutes).