‘I hate working. I can’t stand working. I hate working. I can’t stand working.’ Ida, a young and alienated sex worker in East Los Angeles, insists in a disaffected cadence on how much she hates work. Soon she will be accused of killing a john and sent to a prison ruled over by nuns, where she retreats deeper and deeper into her inner world. This is Magdalena Viraga, American independent filmmaker Nina Menkes’s dream-like yet urgent feature debut from 1986. Like so many of Menkes’s female protagonists, Ida is beautiful and she is alone. Profoundly alienated by work but dependent on its income to survive, she will eventually refuse to cooperate.
‘If you’re a woman artist, everything is against you. This feeling can take you to the edge of suicide,’ Menkes tells me flatly. A feminist director of bewitching and elliptical narrative art cinema, Menkes has independently produced, directed and photographed her films from the beginning, in an ongoing struggle to raise money while staying true to her artistic and political vision. Her output is small but indelible: six features, a handful of shorts and now, a new documentary, Brainwashed: Sex-Camera-Power. This post-#MeToo exposé of the sexist representation of women in film and its wider social implications is her most accessible – and certainly most literal – film to date. Menkes’s estranged fictional characters, at some level, represent a part of her: ‘Not me in my normal, day-to-day life, but an archetypal aspect of trying to survive as someone who does not accept what is being dished out.’
Whether engaged in sex or care work or ploughing away in the military or gambling industries, Menkes’s low-income heroines are trapped in a vortex of patriarchal violence, alienated labour and capitalist consumption. Though shot in long takes and exquisitely framed in oneiric, often static compositions, the American Dream sure looks like a living nightmare. ‘My characters generally don’t have solutions to what makes them rage and despair, but at least they express it and they refuse at a certain level to participate.’ These women are ‘saying no but haven’t really learned what they can say yes to. Maybe there isn’t anything they can say yes to?’
Menkes grew up in a leftist Jewish family in Berkeley, California, during the 1960s. Her parents, refugees from Nazi Germany, had initially resettled in Jerusalem before moving to New York to study, and then to California, where they started a family. Though Menkes didn’t grow up around the cinema, she did have an ‘early inclination towards performance and magic’, putting on plays with her sister Tinka, running a witch school for the neighbours and dreaming vividly.
‘My mother was in Jungian analysis when I was growing up. She was always writing down her dreams and encouraged us to write ours down… They say whatever you water, it grows. I grew up paying a lot of attention to my dream life and my inner psychic life.’ Menkes followed her into Jungian analysis. Specific dreams rematerialise in her films, for reasons she doesn’t always understand. In this and other interviews, Menkes asserts her reliance on the intuitive process: ‘I resist an intellectual understanding of my work until after it’s done because I feel my intuition is stronger than my rational brain.’ The editing process is, however, different: ‘Gathering material is one hundred per cent intuition,’ she says, ‘but the editing process is where the intellectual rigour can come to bear.’
Menkes started making films while at UCLA in Berkeley. The first of these, A Soft Warrior, from 1981 – a short, ritualistic film shot on Super 8 – marked the start of an intense collaboration with her sister, Tinka. A punk cipher of feminine rage and resistance, and a defiant performer with an astounding physical presence, Tinka is the magnetic centre of Menkes’s early films through to The Bloody Child (1996).
In The Great Sadness of Zohara (1983), Tinka plays an Orthodox Jewish woman on a journey to the other side. (‘For a Jewish girl from Jerusalem, the so-called “other side” is the Arab world’). Borrowing $5,000 from UCLA, the Menkes sisters set off for Jerusalem and North Africa. This densely incantatory short rewires the archetypal hero’s quest – explored in the work of Jung or Joseph Campbell’s 1949 study of quest narratives, The Hero with a Thousand Faces – from a distinctively feminine perspective: ‘In classic narratives you have a hero who leaves home, travels into foreign lands, slays dragons, grabs the princess and brings her home. A perfect example of sexist imperialism.’ Shooting on 16mm film, they didn’t see the footage until they got back to LA. Menkes was shocked when she saw the material: ‘My god, this woman is so alienated. It was as if the camera captured my inner truth. The film was like a dream that was talking back to me. And this was before I got into analysis!’
Menkes’s films have minimal, albeit potent, narratives, which fracture and split apart, and even double in later films. They return to symbolically redolent, barren landscapes (the desert, the casino, the run-down motel) and are punctuated by periods of extreme stasis in which nothing much happens. A gesture or act is extended beyond its normal duration in a film, like the unforgettable 17-minute blackjack sequence in Queen of Diamonds (1991), a hypnotic portrait of alienated labour. But then an image will suddenly conspire to take your breath away. Protagonists seem numb to extraordinary events – a death, a burning palm tree in the desert – but audiences, if they submit, may be riveted. ‘Some people think Magdalena Viraga was influenced by Chantal Akerman, but I made that film before I saw Jeanne Dielman. Queen of Diamonds was certainly influenced by it though.’
Why, then, does she reject the term ‘experimental’? ‘At least in Hollywood, “experimental” was something of a dirty word. It gave the impression of very low budgets, which was true, although I always wanted one! It also suggested completely non-narrative films. I’ve always been interested in narrative arcs and characters. Do people call David Lynch, Antonioni, Tarkovsky experimental filmmakers? No, they are just original. One of the reasons my work was labelled experimental was that it went against the whole male perspective on life. I don’t think my films are experimental, they are just oppositional.’
The Bloody Child shows Menkes at her most intense and hallucinatory. Originating in a Los Angeles Times news clipping about a Gulf War veteran who murdered his pregnant wife and was found digging her grave in the desert, ‘this little story contained everything: about violence and patriarchal constructs. I knew I had to dive into it, but also knew I had to approach this differently.’ Menkes shot the film without a script, because she wanted to take her philosophy (‘We jump into the unknown and find the truth’) and push it to the max. We never see the murder but follow the unfolding story horizontally, through piercing shards of repetitive, cyclical action, like the displays of toxic masculinity from the off-duty Marines. At times, I find the film almost unbearable because of its claustrophobic tension, but am dragged back in by the startling beauty of its images. Menkes calls The Bloody Child ‘the descent into hell… there was nowhere to go but up towards the light.’ The films that come after it are more accessible, more narrative in a traditional sense. Phantom Love (2007), her first film in black and white, is also her most explicitly surrealist, with evocative dream images that can be parsed relatively straightforwardly.
Menkes returns us to the bustling casino and the disaffected female croupier of Queen of Diamonds (‘I couldn’t believe this character kept haunting me!’), although coordinates have shifted from Las Vegas to Koreatown in LA. In a startling sequence, the wounded woman levitates above the bed and shatters, fragmenting into droplets. The wound has finally burst. There is a glimmer of hope.
Because Phantom Love portrayed ‘a sort of illumination’ after the darkness of The Bloody Child, Menkes felt ready to explore something different next. Her first film shot digitally, Dissolution (2010) also features her first male protagonist, played by Israeli actor Didi Fire. Menkes takes on the ‘wounded male counterpart to the alienated female character I’d been tracking all these years.’ His violence towards the feminine is also tied, Menkes notes, to Israeli violence against the Palestinians. Male violence is not glorified or celebrated, because he’s shown as ‘morally corrupt and weak inside’.
Placing a man at the heart of her work for the first time prepared her to make a film like Brainwashed. Though it sounds like a bold step into the unknown, she is also revisiting familiar terrain, mining subjects and themes she’s explored before. ‘I just didn’t have the reverence for the masterful male filmmakers that others had. This is not to say I don’t revere great filmmakers, but I was always aware that the position of women in these films was not representative. I didn’t see some of the classic patriarchal films until fairly late in my filmmaking. I was literally afraid to see those films. I thought they would destroy me.’
Sophia Satchell-Baeza, Sight and Sound, May 2023
BRAINWASHED: SEX-CAMERA-POWER
Directed by: Nina Menkes
©: Brainwashedmovie LLC
Logos: Menkesfilm, Eos World Fund, CalArts Center for New Performance
Executive Producers: Tim Disney, Susan Disney Lord, Abigail Disney
Produced by: Nina Menkes
Line Producer (Atlanta Production Unit): Nsenga Burton
Line Producer (Beverly Hills Production Unit/Los Angeles Production Unit): Sijia Ma
Line Producer (Mar Del Plata, Argentina Production Unit - Santiago San Martin Media): Santiago San Martin
Line Producer (London Production Unit - Onerva Pictures): Tanja Rusi
Creative Producers: Inka Rusi, Cecily Rhett
Unit Production Manager (Silverlake, LA Production Unit): Daphne Teng
Post-production Supervisor: Jim Rosenthal
Film Research: Sarah Ben Hardouze, Francis Disney
Based on the talk ‘Sex and Power: The Visual Language of Cinema’ by: Nina Menkes
Director of Photography: Shana Hagan
Director of Photography (Brooklyn Academy of Music Production Unit): Jeffrey Clanet
Director of Photography (Beverly Hills Production Unit/West LA Production Unit): Sandra Chandler
Director of Photography (CalArts Bijou Theatre Production Unit): Shana Hagan
Director of Photography (CalArts Walt Disney Modular Theater Production Unit): Shana Hagan
Director of Photography (Eagle Rock, Los Angeles Production Unit): Shana Hagan
Director of Photography (London Production Unit - Onerva Pictures): Joseph Dunn
Director of Photography (Silverlake, LA Production Unit): Emma Pantall
Cameraman (Atlanta Production Unit): Dehanza Rogers
Cameraman (Chicago Production Unit): Grayson Rieth
Cameraman (Durham, North Carolina Production Unit): Ryan Romkema
Cameraman (Mar Del Plata, Argentina Production Unit - Santiago San Martin Media): Lautaro Prieto
Cameraman (San Francisco Production Unit): Yuito Kimura
Cameraman (Los Angeles Production Unit): Lautaro Prieto
Editor: Cecily Rhett
Lead Assistant Editor: Jim Rosenthal
Set Designer (CalArts Walt Disney Modular Theater Production Unit): Mengquing Yuan
Graphic Designer: Natalie Gooden
Main Title, Animation and Graphic Design: Compost Creative
Music by: Sharon Farber
Music Scoring Mixer/Music Editor: Michael Stern
Sound Design: Lucas Fehring
Sound Mixer (Atlanta Production Unit): Chris Mills
Sound Mixer (Beverly Hills Production Unit): Theresa Radka
Sound Mixer (CalArts Bijou Theatre Production Unit/CalArts Walt Disney Modular Theater Production Unit/West LA Production Unit): Ben Allison
(CalArts Bijou Theatre Production Unit/CalArts Walt Disney Modular Theater Production Unit): Ian Morland
Sound Mixer (Eagle Rock, Los Angeles Production Unit): Dennis Hamlin
Sound Mixer (Mar Del Plata, Argentina Production Unit - Santiago San Martin Media): Federico Eduardo Lenz
Sound Mixer (San Francisco Production Unit): Tomoya Yamashita
Sound Mixer (London Production Unit - Onerva Pictures): Xan Márquez Caneda
Sound Mixer (Los Angeles Production Unit): Federico Eduardo Lenz
Sound Mixer (Silverlake, LA Production Unit): Scott Esterly
Re-recording Mixer: Michael Stern
Supervising Sound Editor: Michael Stern
USA 2022©
107 mins
A BFI release
CINEMATIC SORCERESS: THE FILMS OF NINA MENKES
Magdalena Viraga
Sat 6 May 13:20; Wed 31 May 20:30
The Great Sadness of Zohara
Sun 7 May 16:10; Mon 29 May 16:20
Queen of Diamonds
Tue 9 May 18:20 (+ Q&A with Nina Menkes); Wed 24 May 20:30
Dissolution (Hitparkut)
Tue 9 May 20:30 (+ Q&A with Nina Menkes); Sat 20 May 18:20
The Bloody Child
Thu 11 May 20:30; Sat 27 May 13:40
Brainwashed: Sex-Camera-Power
From Fri 12 May
Phantom Love
Sun 14 May 18:15; Mon 22 May 20:40
IN PERSON & PREVIEWS
Preview: Brainwashed: Sex-Camera-Power + Nina Menkes in Conversation
Wed 10 May 18:00
Dario Argento in Conversation
Fri 12 May 18:20
Mark Kermode Live in 3D at the BFI
Mon 15 May 18:30
TV Preview: Best Interests + Q&A with Sharon Horgan and Jack Thorne
Mon 22 May 18:15
Preview: The Old Man Movie: Lactopalypse! + Q&A with directors Mikk Magi and Oskar Lehemaa
Fri 26 May 18:15
World Premiere: Straight 8 2023 Top 25
Sat 27 May 18:00
SIGHT AND SOUND
Never miss an issue with Sight and Sound, the BFI’s internationally renowned film magazine. Subscribe from just £25*
*Price based on a 6-month print subscription (UK only). More info: sightandsoundsubs.bfi.org.uk
BFI SOUTHBANK
Welcome to the home of great film and TV, with three cinemas and a studio, a world-class library, regular exhibitions and a pioneering Mediatheque with 1000s of free titles for you to explore. Browse special-edition merchandise in the BFI Shop.We're also pleased to offer you a unique new space, the BFI Riverfront – with unrivalled riverside views of Waterloo Bridge and beyond, a delicious seasonal menu, plus a stylish balcony bar for cocktails or special events. Come and enjoy a pre-cinema dinner or a drink on the balcony as the sun goes down.
BECOME A BFI MEMBER
Enjoy a great package of film benefits including priority booking at BFI Southbank and BFI Festivals. Join today at bfi.org.uk/join
BFI PLAYER
We are always open online on BFI Player where you can watch the best new, cult & classic cinema on demand. Showcasing hand-picked landmark British and independent titles, films are available to watch in three distinct ways: Subscription, Rentals & Free to view.
See something different today on player.bfi.org.uk
Join the BFI mailing list for regular programme updates. Not yet registered? Create a new account at www.bfi.org.uk/signup
Programme notes and credits compiled by the BFI Documentation Unit
Notes may be edited or abridged
Questions/comments? Contact the Programme Notes team by email