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Exclusive: Nina Menkes’ “Queen of Diamonds” Has Been Restored, Will Be Re-Released

November 3, 2018

November 1st

By Laura Berger

Originally released in 1991, Nina Menkes’ subversive drama “Queen of Diamonds” was heralded as a feminist masterwork. Now the film about a struggling Blackjack dealer is getting a second life. A newly restored version of the pic will be screening on November 10 at AFI Fest, where Menkes will be giving a talk on how women are disempowered on screen. Those who can’t attend the Hollywood fest will also have the opportunity to watch the film. Arbelos has acquired world rights to “Queen of Diamonds,” and will be releasing the film theatrically in spring of 2019, with VOD and Blu-ray to follow.

Set in Las Vegas, “Queen of Diamonds” tells the story of Firdaus (Tinka Menkes), a Blackjack dealer contending with a missing husband and neighboring domestic violence. Her “world unfolds as a fragmented but hypnotic interplay between repetition and repressed anger,” the film’s synopsis details.

“’Queen of Diamonds’ is my very personal portrait of the U.S.: an over-enlarged, profit-motivated core surrounded by mute and arid alienation,” said Menkes. “The female protagonist is both deeply estranged and psychically powerful. Her loner position is the backside of centuries of Western Heroes: she stands in the center as watcher and victim of a system which is starting to crack.” She continued, “The film polarized audiences when it came out in 1991. I’m thrilled about the new restoration and curious to hear reactions from a new generation of movie goers!”

Eos World Fund (EOS), a global initiative that supports women directors, is co-presenting the film at AFI Fest.

“Nina Menkes’ films have broken new ground in cinematic language; she is one of America’s great auteurs. From the time of her first films unspooled, Menkes has been compared to Michelangelo Antonioni and David Lynch. She has created powerful points of view and startlingly, provocative imagery like no one else in cinema,” said Eos World Fund founder Gwen Wynne.

Menkes’ next film, “Minotaur Rex,” is slated to start production next year. Her other credits include “The Great Sadness of Zohara” and “The Bloody Child.”

Check out information about Menkes’ AFI talk below.” The new restoration of “Queen of Diamonds” is by The Academy Film Archive and The Film Foundation, with funding provided by The George Lucas Foundation.

https://womenandhollywood.com/exclusive-nina-menkes-queen-of-diamonds-has-been-restored-will-be-re-released/

EOS WORLD FUND LAUNCH, Jan. 19th, 11AM at Sundance Film Fest 2018

January 11, 2018

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EOS WORLD FUND LAUNCH at SUNDANCE 2018
 
Recipients Julie Dash and Nina Menkes
 
Nina Menkes’s Cinematic talk:
“Sex and Power: the Visual Language of Oppression”
 
EOS to support Nina Menkes’s
“MINOTAUR REX”
with Ziad Bakri and Nina Hoss
 
 
JANUARY 19, 2018- 11AM-12:30pm–The Black House,
Sundance Film Festival 2018
reception immediately following!
 
Dear Friends:
 
I’m delighted to invite you to the THE EOS WORLD FUND launch, featuring my cinematic talk: “Sex and Power; The Visual Language of Oppression”, at Sundance 2018.
 
The Eos World Fund is a new global initiative that supports bold and innovative women directors.  Created by Apricot Films’ visionary producer/director Gwen Wynne, EOS is a concrete, productive response to the crisis involving the severe lack of women helmers in cinema.
 
Gwen Wynne’s EOS World Fund is notably different than other similar initiatives, in that it seeks out material and artists who are known for their unusual, innovative and provocative cinematic work, in both form and content.
 
I’m thrilled to be one of the first two recipients, along with feminist film pioneer, Julie Dash.
 
The Eos World Fund launch at Sundance 2018
will take place at The Black House,
Friday, January 19th, 11am-12:30pm.
Reception following
 
The launch will be featuring my presentation, “Sex and Power; The Visual Language of Oppression”, in which I discuss how the recent tidal wave of sexual abuse and assault revelations connect  to the visual grammar of cinema.  Drawing on insights from Laura Mulvey’s sadly, still highly relevant essay, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”, my talk shows clips from a variety of iconic films, starting in the 1940’s through the present, to show how women are photographically disempowered on screen.
 
I first wrote about this issue in my FILMMAKER magazine article on November 30, 2017: “The Visual Language of Oppression: Harvey Wasn’t Working in a Vacuum”.  Much to my amazement, the article was named FILMMAKER’s #1 most popular post of 2017, and Amazon Movies’ Ted Hope, tweeted that my talk is “now my @Sundance2018 #1 MUST SEE!”
 
Read the original article here: http://filmmakermagazine.com/103801-the-visual-language-of-oppression-harvey-wasnt-working-in-a-vacuum/
 
I’m also very happy that the EOS World Fund is providing significant seed financing for my new feature project, MINOTAUR REX, a radical re-telling of the ancient Greek myth. Set in contemporary Jerusalem the film is both a thriller, and an allegory for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  Palestinian actor Ziad Bakri, and German star Nina Hoss are attached.
 
Julie Dash, the first African American woman to direct a theatrically released feature film, DAUGHTERS OF THE DUST (1991), is a feminist film pioneer.  Julie will be present at the launch and we’ll be participating in a panel discussion after my talk: Women in Charge: Through a New Lens.
The panel will be moderated by Rachel Wattanbe-Batton
A reception will follow.
 
I well remember that both Julie Dash and I were among the first women to present features at Sundance, back in 1991. Julie was there with DAUGHTERS OF THE DUST; I showed QUEEN OF DIAMONDS.
 
So, it feels happily synchronous to announce that Scorsese’s Film Foundation has just awarded a restoration grant to Mark Toscano at the Academy Film Archives, to photochemically (means: on 35mm film) restore my feature film, QUEEN OF DIAMONDS, with additional funds for creating a high quality digital copy! Grants are given to work that is considered “culturally and historically significant”.
 
The EOS World Fund Launch is presented by The Black House at Sundance, and sponsored by New York Women in Film, and the African, woman-owned production house: Moon Valley Studios, Hyphenate and California Institute of the Arts.
 
For any other additional information, please contact me directly at: nina@ninamenkes.com
 
I hope to see some of you soon, at Sundance 2018.
In the meantime, with my very best wishes for happy, healthy and creative new year.
 

Sundance Talk on Sex-and-Power in Shot Design, January 19th!

December 31, 2017

HOLY MACARONI and HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL!!
My “Visual Language of Oppression” article was shared over 5200 times on facebook alone, and was the #1 most popular Filmmaker magazine post of 2017!! Glad the subject of film-and-feminism is coming up popular for the first time in forever!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! HOPE TO SEE YOU AT SUNDANCE, January 19th, 11am at the Black House for launch of Gwen Wynne’s EOS WORLD FUND, and my talk “Sex and Power: The Visual Language of Oppression”, with real film clips! 🙂  as well as Gwen Wynne, Julie Dash, Rachel Watanabe-Batton and Morgan Stanley’s Jurgen Alexander, in person!!! 
Here’s the original FILMMAKER article:

The Visual Language of Oppression: Harvey Wasn’t Working in a Vacuum

A friend shares his thoughts about the movies

July 9, 2017

Thank you so much, Marcus, for this note which surely cheered me up during a very dark time….
“I really did want to communicate in earnest how moved I am by your films and the innovation of your aesthetic economy. I’ve never seen images/pace/duration like they way you craft them. I’m blown by your sense of rhythm, the way you use negative space (I get delusional flashbacks to my Japanese film history, because you reinvent negative space in a different way for yourself), and your completely unique means of synthesizing dream and reality. I think a lot of the power in cinema’s fabric lies in the ability to fuse real/fantasy and life/dream. I find the two greatest powers of film are empathy and escape – and you combine the two in an inspired way. To me, your work is radical, and, in a word, I haven’t seen anything quite like it. There’s something in it that we can all connect to – for Berenice Reynaud, its the jiang hu, for Robert Koehler its Bela Tarr and Jean Cocteau, for me, it’s like a fusion of Japanese film and something like Barbara Hammer, but it’s also something quite unfathomable, just – new, and original. Reynaud wrote that you have “no master and no disciples,” so that would make some sense. In the 21st Century, I think it’s extraordinary then to have created something different – when a lot of cynical thinking is that “it’s all been done before”.
-Marcus Sudac

QUEEN OF DIAMONDS at dffb

February 23, 2017

Happy to participate in the 50th Anniversary Celebration of the Deutsche Film-und Fernsehakademie Berlin (dffb) in Berlin, Germany (March 21-27, 2017). I will be presenting the feature QUEEN OF DIAMONDS (1990), discussing the film with REVOLVER’s Nicolas Wackerbarth; giving a public talk entitled “Cinematic Images of Women” and holding a master class for the DFFB students. Queen ofDiamondsburningtree