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BRAINWASHED in THE NEW YORK TIMES: 5 Female Directors Reject the Male Gaze

March 9, 2020

‘International Women’s Day arrives Sunday on the heels of another season of #OscarSoMale and another prize for the director Roman Polanski, who fled the United States in 1978, after he was convicted of unlawful sex with a minor.

And yet, there are bright spots. “I went to see ‘Portrait of a Lady on Fire’ yesterday,” said the filmmaker and CalArts film professor Nina Menkes, “and there were trailers for three other films by women. It’s impossible! It’s the first time anything like this has happened in my life.”

Menkes is the creator of “Sex and Power: The Visual Language of Oppression,” a lecture and clip show she has been staging at film festivals around the world. In it, she uses scenes ranging from Hitchcock’s 1946 “Notorious” (1946) to Sofia Coppola’s 2003 “Lost in Translation” (with its opening shot of Scarlett Johansson’s barely clad backside) to demonstrate the nuances of objectification, the male gaze and how it’s perpetuated.

And not just by men. “I’ve had women students come in and show footage that begins on the woman character’s face,” Menkes said, “then for no apparent reason it cuts down to her low-cut shirt. And goes lower. And then back up. And I’d say, ‘Why did you film that way?’ And there’d be this deer-in-the-headlights look. They were doing what they’d seen a million times. And weren’t even aware of it. Heterosexual male actors are almost never filmed that way.”

Right now there’s a surge in cinema made by women — not just “Portrait,” but also recent and forthcoming movies like “Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey,” “The Assistant,” “Lost Girls,” “Never Rarely Sometimes Always,” “Zola” and Menkes’s documentary “Brainwashed.” I spoke to the directors to find out how they have been incorporating Menkes’s lessons into their work.’

By John Anderson, March 6, 2020

Read the full article HERE

Visual Pleasure for Whom?

March 6, 2020

Nina Menkes and Anna Biller Talk Queen of Diamonds and Female Representation on Screen

To mark the restoration and re-release of Menkes’ 1991 film, director Anna Biller interviews her friend about the movie and its radical approaches. Check out the full article here.

Amazing Essay in CINEMASCOPE by Erika Balsom

January 1, 2020

Read Erika’s beautiful essay here:

FAR FROM PARADISE; Nina Menkes’s QUEEN OF DIAMONDS