Nina Menkes’ investigation of the male gaze is headed to Kino Lorber. A press release announced the company has snagged North American rights to “Brainwashed: Sex-Camera-Power.” As Menkes told us, the documentary “exposes the way the visual language of cinema, as seen in the cinematic canon — feature films that win at Cannes and the Academy Awards, cult classics, and other favorites — intersects with, and contributes to, the twin epidemics of employment discrimination against women and an environment of pervasive sexual harassment, abuse, and assault.”
“Brainwashed” will receive a theatrical release this fall, and later stream on Kanopy.
Based on Menkes’ lecture “Sex and Power: The Hidden Language of Cinema,” the film premiered earlier this year at Sundance and has gone on to screen at the Berlinale and CPH:DOX. Featuring about 200 film clips and commentary from writers, directors, and producers such as Julie Dash (“Daughters of the Dust”), Amy Ziering (“On the Record”), Eliza Hittman (“Never Rarely Sometimes Always”), and Joey Soloway (“Transparent”), “Brainwashed” expands upon the work of feminists Laura Mulvey, Judith Butler, bell hooks, and Angela Carter in order to unpack how shot design “has functioned to perpetuate the sexist binary throughout cinematic history, and its serious implications for our real lives,” per the press release.
Menkes directed and produced the doc. Co-producers include Maria Giese, Guo Guo, Summer Xinlei Yang, and Sandra de Castro Buffington, and Abigail Disney and Susan Disney Lord are among the EPs.
“I’m more than thrilled that the very excellent art film distributor Kino Lorber is handling the release of ‘Brainwashed’ in North America,” Menkes said. “With #malegaze on TikTok hitting 290 million views and climbing, our subject matter is a hot, essential topic for right now — and Kino will get the film to a very wide audience.”
“Making ‘Brainwashed’ widely available, including for academic use, ensures a new generation of filmmakers, researchers, and cinema enthusiasts will have access to a powerful tool to help re-contextualize the entire history of the art form,” Jason Tyrrell, General Manager of Kanopy, emphasized. “Universities and library communities that view Nina Menkes’s film will be foundational in creating and supporting an industry that can begin to acknowledge and think critically about how the male gaze has impacted both the creation of art and its imprint on public life.”
Menkes is also the director of “Queen of Diamonds,” “Magdalena Viraga,” and “Phantom Love.” She received the Berlinale’s FIPRESCI Prize for the doc “Massacre” and the Los Angeles Film Critics Association’s Independent/Experimental Film and Video Award for “Magdalena Viraga.” Menkes is a Fulbright and Guggenheim Fellow and on the faculty at California Institute of the Arts.
