Brainwashed: Sex-Camera-Power
Using tantalizing film excerpts, independent director and academic Nina Menkes explains clearly how basic film techniques objectify women on screen and what the consequences are for women's work in the film industry and their safety in general. Subject/object positions, framing, camera movements, lighting, narrative – the workshop analysis concludes that regardless of whether it is a classic from several decades ago (The Lady from Shanghai, Rear Window, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid) or a contemporary film (Blade Runner 2049, Adela, Wonder Woman) – even those directed by a woman! – the ABC of film language invariably reproduces the patriarchal vision of the world of women and men. Brainwashed... includes commentary by other directors, experts and equality activists from the film industry (Geena Davis, Maria Giese, Joey Soloway, Ita O’Brien). Menkes walks with these thoughts around Cannes and in front of the big screen of the lecture hall. Her silhouette and commentary shatter the intimacy of scenes dominated by a man's gaze. The connoisseurs of her work claim that she has found a way to speak to us in another language.
Discussion panel: Is the other gaze possible?
10.11, 17:15 KNH6
after the screening
(in Polish only)
Nina Menkes
Nina Menkes is an avant-garde American filmmaker who graduated with a degree in film from the University of California w Los Angeles. She has lectured at University of Southern California, California Institute of the Arts, Tel Aviv University and the Film and Television Institute of India in Pune. Her oeuvre includes eight films that she wrote, directed, and produced and, for many years, her sister Tinka Menkes, was her leading actress, muse and closest associate. Menkes’s films have screened at festivals in Berlin, Sundance, Rotterdam, Locarno as well as the Whitney Museum of American Art and the New York Museum of Modern Art.
Filmography
1983 Wielki smutek Zohary / The Great Sadness of Zohara (short)
1986 Magdalena Viraga
1991 Królowa diamentów / Queen of Diamonds
1996 Krwawe dziecię / The Bloody Child
2000 The Crazy Bloody Female Center
2005 Masakra / Massaker / Massacre (co-dir.)
2007 Miłość fantomowa / Phantom Love
2012 Rozpad / Hitparkut / Dissolution
2022 Brainwashed: seks, kamera, władza / Brainwashed: Sex-Camera-Power (doc.)
Cast & Crew
