Erica Nguyen
I am a Vietnamese American documentary filmmaker, based in a rural tribal community outside Santa Fe, New Mexico- where I served as a behavioral health worker and filmmaking mentor for Native recovery programs and marginalized public school students. My Interdisciplinary studies at UC Berkeley revolved around Anthropology, Ethnographic Film and Sociolinguistics. My grassroots background includes participation in a Peruvian collective for documentary activism across fishing villages and archiving personal stories related to Pueblo traditional skills. Collaboration through mutual self study is a defining motivator that connects these diverse fields.
My filmmaking trajectory is blossoming into a body of work that centers the outsider experience. For those of us who straddle worlds, what forms of communication can we use to transcend otherness? When does estrangement from our origins manifest in our bodies? How might we move authentically between spaces? These are the focal questions or currents that run beneath all my film collaborations.
