Bio

Linh Vu is an experimental documentary filmmaker based in NYC. Her films have been presented at Microscope Gallery, Filmmakers Cooperative, Mono No Aware XVI Festival, Echo Park Film Center, Millennium Film Workshop, Orphan Film Symposium, Synesthesia Brooklyn, Pari Passu Gallery and Zumzeig Cinema in Barcelona.

She has worked at several film institutions and festivals including Anthology Film Archives, MONO NO AWARE, Light Industry, Ann Arbor Film Festival, New York Film Festival, Far Out Film Fest, Rhode Island International Film Festival, Producers Guild of America, among others.

She received her BA in Cinema and Media Arts from Vanderbilt University.

Artist Statement

My work, often shot on a Bolex 16mm camera and Canon 514XL Super 8, is influenced by lyrical film theory as articulated by P. Adams Sitney, as well as Jonas Mekas’s agitated camera movement as both a response to and documentation of fragmentary everyday life. I am drawn to personal filmmaking, particularly the practice of in-camera editing, where poetic and impressionistic elements evoke a drifting consciousness shaped by shifting thoughts, emotions, and lived truths.

I am fascinated by how the camera becomes an extension of the filmmaker’s inner vision, inviting viewers to actively engage with the image through their own memories, beliefs, and experiences. Alongside this, I work with direct film techniques, physically altering the emulsion to destroy, transform, and repurpose footage shot in the past. Through an exploration of the materiality of celluloid, I experiment frame by frame using methods such as bleaching, hand-painting, scratching, contact printing, photograms, and the application of found materials like newspapers and stickers.