“Nina Menkes’ eye-opening documentary will forever change how you look at films.” – Kate Erbland, IndieWire
“Brainwashed is a bracing blast of critical rigor, taking a clear, cool look at the unexamined assumptions behind what we see on the screen.” – Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian
Brainwashed: Sex-Camera-Power, based on celebrated independent filmmaker Nina Menkes’s cinematic presentation, ‘Sex and Power, the Visual Language of Cinema’, this exceptional documentary explores the sexual politics of cinematic shot design. Using scores of film clips, from Metropolis to Vertigo to Phantom Thread, Menkes makes the case that shot design is gendered.
She illuminates patriarchal narrative codes within classic set-ups and camera angles that display women as objects for the use, support, and pleasure of men. She also argues that these embedded messages affect society’s twin epidemics of sexual abuse and assault, as well as employment discrimination, by deconstructing the many ways in which film creates hierarchies between gender, race and class, often without anyone noticing. She also includes interviews with many industry professionals—Julie Dash, Penelope Spheeris, Eliza Hittman, Rosanna Arquette, among others, and her performative film talk is an entertaining, yet urgent and timely introduction to critical film theory, which, by taking a close look at the “male gaze,” dives into the obsession with oversexualizing women in cinema.
Directed by Nina Menkes, U.S.A., DCP, 107 mins.
Official Selection
Sundance Film Festival 2022
Berlin International Film Festival 2022
CPH:DOX 2022
IDFA 2021
View the film’s official website for more awards and festival info.
SPECIAL PANEL EVENT
Join FACETS on Sunday, December 4th to watch Brainwashed: Sex-Camera-Power paired with a special panel discussion featuring director Nina Menkes and producer Maria Giese who will be participating via Zoom. Panel moderator, Michel Weldon, and panelists Michelle Yates, Rebecca Fons, and Ines Sommer will be joining in-person at FACETS.
Tickets purchased for either screening on December 4th include admission to the panel, plus a dessert & wine reception.
SAT 12/3 – 3pm 5pm 7pm
SAT 12/10 – 3pm 5pm 7pm
SUN 12/11 –5pm 7pm
Standard Pricing
$12 – General Admission
$10 – FACETS Members
Sunday, December 4th
Screening 1 – 1pm
Reception – 2:30pm – 5:30pm
Panel Event – 3:30pm – 4:45pm
Screening 2 – 5:30pm
Panel Event & Reception Pricing
Ticket includes entry to screening, panel event & reception on 12/4.
$40 – Supporter
$20 – General
$10 – Students & FACETS Members