This artistic research queers censorship by investigating how Vietnamese independent filmmakers encounter and transcend both overt and latent forms of control imposed by the state, society, and the filmmakers themselves. In this context, to “queer” censorship means to twist, subvert, and navigate around its mechanisms in order to expose, resist, and reconfigure their power.

Grounded in an arts-based methodology of experimental film practice, the project mobilizes archival fragments and found footage as critical and aesthetic strategies for unsettling dominant narratives. Positioned at the intersection of historical inquiry and artistic experimentation, the project adopts a threefold lens: (1) examining the historical trajectory of film censorship in Vietnam, uncovering how the legacy of French colonial censorship reverberates within contemporary mechanisms of control; (2) tracing how independent filmmakers negotiate artistic freedom within the contradictions of neo-liberal authoritarianism; and (3) engaging in an auto-ethnographic investigation of one filmmaker’s practice, mapping the entanglements of censorship with artistic choices, production conditions, and strategies of circulation.

By combining historical research with an embodied, practice-led approach, this research reimagines cinema not merely as representation but as an artistic methodology of resisting, surviving, and reconfiguring censorship in authoritarian societies.