FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
November 21, 2022
MEDIA CONTACTS
Charles Coleman, charles@facets.org
Paul Gonter, paul@facets.org
FACETS ANNOUNCES FULL BRAINWASHED: SEX-CAMERA-POWER PANEL EVENT WITH DIRECTOR NINA MENKES
Press Release
CHICAGO— FACETS is pleased to announce that they will be hosting a special panel event and reception on Sunday, December 4, 2022, starting at 2:30 pm in support of the Chicago Premiere of celebrated independent filmmaker Nina Menkes’s new documentary Brainwashed: Sex-Camera-Power, which runs from December 3-11, 2022. The December 4th panel will be introduced by FACETS Film Program Director, Charles Coleman, will be moderated by award-winning author, journalist, and emerita faculty in journalism at Northwestern University, Michele Weldon, with panelists Nina Menkes, director of Brainwashed, Maria Giese, producer of Brainwashed, Michelle Yates, Associate Professor in the Humanities, History, and Social Sciences Department at Columbia College Chicago, Rebecca Fons, Director of Programming at the Gene Siskel Film Center, and Ines Sommer, a filmmaker, cinematographer, curator, media arts advocate, administrator, film programmer and educator.
The panel event, reception, and screenings will take place at FACETS (1517 W. Fullerton). Tickets can be purchased in advance through FACETS’ website. Tickets for the screenings, panel event and reception on Sunday, December 4th are $40 for supporters, $20 for general admission, and $10 for students and FACETS Members. Screenings on December 3 and 10-11 are $12 for general admission and $10 for FACETS Members, who get 15% off their ticket purchases with a proof of valid membership.
Tickets can be purchased on FACETS‘ website here.
PANEL EVENT & RECEPTION
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.
MEET THE PANEL
Moderator, Michel Weldon: Michele Weldon is an award-winning author, journalist, emerita faculty in journalism at Northwestern University. She has been working as an editor and writer for more than four decades in newspaper, magazine and digital journalism and is a frequent contributor on issues of gender, media, and popular culture. Her award-winning books include Act Like You’re Having A Good Time (2020), winner of the 2021 Independent Publishers Award for Best Book of Nonfiction Essays. She has delivered more than 200 keynotes and appeared on scores of TV and radio outlets including “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” “Today Show,” CNN, BBC, ABC-TV, NPR, and more. She is editorial director of Take The Lead, a women’s leadership initiative and serves on the advisory boards of Global Girl Media Chicago, Between Friends, Sarah’s Inn, The Children’s Foundation and Beat The Streets Chicago.
Panelist, Nina Menkes: Called “Brilliant, one of the most provocative artists in film today,” by The Los Angeles Times, and a “Cinematic Sorceress” by The New York Times, Menkes’ films synthesize inner dream worlds with brutal, outer realities. Her work has shown widely in major international film festivals, including Sundance (four feature premieres), the Berlinale, Locarno, Toronto and The New York Film Festival. She has had numerous international retrospectives and her early work has been selected for restoration by the Academy Film Archive and Scorsese’s Film Foundation with funding from the Hobson/Lucas Foundation. Menkes is a Guggenheim Fellow, a directing member of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and on the film faculty at California Institute of the Arts.
Panelist, Maria Giese: Maria Giese wrote and directed the feature films When Saturday Comes (1996), starring Sean Bean and Pete Postlethwaite, and Hunger (2001). In 2015, after four years of activism in the Directors Guild of America, she instigated the industry-wide federal investigation for women directors in Hollywood. The New York Times called her work “a veritable crusade” and her work is a subject of three recent books and three feature documentary films Half the Picture (Amazon 2018) and This Changes Everything (Netflix 2019), and Brainwashed (Kino Lorber 2022). These films document her work getting the ACLU and EEOC to investigate this issue—the ramifications of which resonated globally. She holds an MFA from UCLA.
Panelist, Michelle Yates: Michelle Yates is Associate Professor in the Humanities, History, and Social Sciences Department at Columbia College Chicago. She teaches courses on and has published numerous peer-review journal articles and book chapters in feminist media studies and the environmental humanities. She is also the co-founder and co-director of the Chicago Feminist Film Festival.
Panelist, Rebecca Fons: Rebecca Fons is Director of Programming at the Gene Siskel Film Center, a public program of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and serves as the Development and Programming Director for the historic Iowa Theater in her hometown of Winterset, IA. Rebecca previously served as Programming Director for FilmScene in Iowa City, IA; Director of Film at the John and Nancy Hughes Theater in Lake Forest, IL; and as Education Director for The Chicago International Film Festival for nearly a decade. Rebecca received her MA from Columbia College Chicago and BA from the University of Iowa. She is co-founder of the Chicago event series Destroy Your Art, and has proudly served on screening committees and juries for festivals including True/False, SXSW, New Orleans Film Festival, Hawaii International Film Festival, and the Milwaukee Film Festival.
Panelist, Ines Sommer: Ines Sommer is a filmmaker, cinematographer, arts administrator, film programmer, and educator whose genre-crossing projects have explored topics ranging from the environment to the arts, feminism, history, and politics. Her creative practice has included character-driven documentaries and essay films, alongside experimental shorts, installations, and a hybrid fiction/doc feature. She is also an Associate Professor of Instruction; Associate Director, MFA in Documentary Media at Northwestern University. Her work ranges from character-driven documentaries and essay films to experimental shorts, often employing a lyrical, observational lens. Her latest projects have explored stories about humans and nature and she’s currently directing an essay film about the toxic legacy of industry on Chicago’s Southeast Side.
FILM INFORMATION
Synopsis: 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.
Brainwashed: Sex-Camera-Power, 2022, DCP, 107 mins, U.S.A., directed by Nina Menkes
SHOWTIMES
Saturday, December 3rd – 3pm 5pm 7pm
Sunday, December 4th – Screening w/ Panel Event & Reception
- Screening #1 – 1pm
- Reception – 2:30pm – 5:30pm
- Panel Event – 3:30pm – 4:45pm
- Screening #2 – 5:30pm
Saturday December 10th – 3pm 5pm 7pm
Sunday, December 11th –5pm 7pm
About FACETS
FACETS connects people to independent ideas through transformative film experiences. Founded by the late Milos Stehlik in 1975, FACETS inspires audiences to engage with film not simply as entertainment, but as an exciting tool to bridge cultural divides, promote digital literacy, and expand perspectives through empathy-driven storytelling. www.facets.org
FACETS presents the Chicago International Children’s Film Festival (CICFF), one of only two Academy Award-qualifying international children’s film festivals in the world.
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