Brainwashed + Q&A

Expanding on her 2020 talk, “Sex & Power: The Visual Language of Cinema", Menkes encourages all audiences to confront and interrogate our cinematic diet and how toxic imagery has real world consequences. Through more than 175 clips, ranging from canonical auteur works like Scorsese’s Raging Bull and Hitchcock’s Vertigo to more contemporary examples such as Denis Villeneueve’s Blade Runner 2049 and Alex Garland's Ex-Machina, Menkes unveils the misogynistic implications behind the images we celebrate. Featuring interviews with groundbreaking directors such as Julie Dash (Daughters of the Dust), Catherine Hardwicke (Thirteen), and seminal film theorist Laura Mulvey, Menkes interrogates every corner  of the sexist  Hollywood system from the workers, to the stars, to the audience and invites her audience to do the same.

#ReclaimTheFrame with our post-screening conversations with Director Nina Menkes:

• Lewes Depot - Saturday 13 May, 17:15 - Moderated by Rui Jin

• HOME, Manchester - Sunday 14 May, 15:00 - Moderated by Anne-Louise Kershaw

• Showroom Cinema, Sheffield - Sunday 14 May, 17:25 - Moderated by Melanie Iredale

PLUS, we're also heading to Cardiff for a #ReclaimTheFrame post-screening panel discussion that celebrates how filmmakers of marginalised genders are doing things differently - subverting the male gaze through feminist and queer perspectives. Our Sarah Gregory will be in conversation with Writer, Director, Producer & Lecturer Rachel Dax (LezDiff) and Senior Lecturer BA Film & Media Laura Stephenson (University of South Wales) to chat about how filmmakers are expanding the lens, offering an antidote to the works featured in BRAINWASHED and to the cinematic diet we’ve grown up on.

• Chapter, Cardiff - Friday 12 May, 18:00 - Moderated by Sarah Gregory