Nina Menkes is taking on the male gaze. The “Queen of Diamonds” director is working on “Brainwashed,” a documentary outlining the omnipresent cinematic techniques that objectify women and girls, Deadline reports. The film also builds on Menkes’ lecture “Sex and Power: The Visual Language of Oppression,” which she has delivered at film festivals around the world.
Menkes is directing and producing “Brainwashed,” and collaborating with a predominantly female creative team. Maria Giese, the filmmaker and DGA member who pushed the ACLU to start looking at employment discrimination against women directors in 2013, will co-produce. She is joined by Summary Productions’ Summer Xinlei Yang and Sandra de Castro Buffington. Abigail Disney and Susan Disney are among the exec producers and Inka Rusi is serving as creative producer. Cecily Rhett is the editor and Shana Hagan the director of photography.
“Brainwashed” offers “incisive commentary on films from the 1940s through the present,” the source details. “Using key scenes from A-list directors, Menkes spotlights how filmmakers employ framing, lighting, visual effects, and camera angles to disempower women while appearing to glamorize them. These cinematic techniques for disempowerment have been dubbed ‘The Menkes List.’”
“I’ve had women students come in and show footage that begins on the woman character’s face,” Menkes has 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.”
Expected to be finished in mid-2021, “Brainwashed” features film clips as well as interviews with filmmakers and thinkers such as Giese.
“Magdalena Viraga,” “Dissolution,” and “Phantom Love” are among Menkes’ previous credits.
A virtual presentation of “Sex and Power” will take place October 23 as part of the Wexner Center’s Unorthodocs fest.
Check out a teaser for “Brainwashed” below.
