Nina Menkes

Nina Menkes

Birth : 1965-10-12, California, USA

History

The filmmaker graduated with an MFA in film production from UCLA in 1989, has received Fulbright Research Awards to the Middle East and is a member of the film faculty at the California Institute of the Arts. Her films have screened at international festivals including Sundance, Cannes (ACID), Rotterdam, Locarno and Toronto. Her documentary Massaker, for which she was also cinematographer, premiered at the Berlinale and won the FIPRESCI Award. Her 1996 feature film The Bloody Child was selected as one of the best films of the past fifty years by the Vienna International Film Festival in Austria.

Profile

Nina Menkes

Movies

Brainwashed: Sex-Camera-Power
Producer
Investigates the politics of cinematic shot design, and how this meta-level of filmmaking intersects with the twin epidemics of sexual abuse/assault and employment discrimination against women, with over 80 movie clips from 1896 - 2020.
Brainwashed: Sex-Camera-Power
Self
Investigates the politics of cinematic shot design, and how this meta-level of filmmaking intersects with the twin epidemics of sexual abuse/assault and employment discrimination against women, with over 80 movie clips from 1896 - 2020.
Brainwashed: Sex-Camera-Power
Director
Investigates the politics of cinematic shot design, and how this meta-level of filmmaking intersects with the twin epidemics of sexual abuse/assault and employment discrimination against women, with over 80 movie clips from 1896 - 2020.
The Lioness
Director
The filmmaker works with material that was created twenty years ago during a trip to India, and which is now seeing the light of day after all. From her own found footage emerges, hypnotically, the image of the lioness - entirely in keeping with this edition of the Viennale.
Dissolution
Director
Hitparkut (Dissolution) combines an almost surreal fairy-tale energy with brutal black and white realism to explore the condition of violence which permeates contemporary Israeli society. Shot is Yafo (the predominantly Arab area of Tel Aviv), the movie follows the moral collapse and first glimmer of redemption, of a young, morose Israeli Jew, played by Israeli actor Didi Fire
Water Spell
Thanks
"Sandy Ding's WATER SPELL is a bold, abstract journey that takes us into the psychic interior of our very cellular structure... and back. For me, this film is about reincarnation and transformation, on both the spiritual and sub-atomic levels. This is not an easy film, but it is a powerful one."

--Nina Menkes
Phantom Love
Editor
A surreal drama about an alienated family set in Koreatown, Los Angeles and Rishikesh, India.
Phantom Love
Director
A surreal drama about an alienated family set in Koreatown, Los Angeles and Rishikesh, India.
Untitled #1
Director
A small girl's nightmare. Untitled No.1 is part of Mike Plante's Lunchfilm series of commissioned shorts (made for the cost of a lunch between Plante and filmmaker Nina Menkes).
Massacre
Co-Director
Interviews with six of the mass murderers from Sabra and Shatilla. The faces are in black and are not identifiable.
The Bloody Child
Director
This film was inspired by a real event—a young US Marine, recently back from the Gulf War, was found digging a grave for his murdered wife in the middle of the California Mojave.
Queen of Diamonds
Editor
Set amid the glittering casino lights and deteriorating desert landscapes of the oasis city Las Vegas, QUEEN OF DIAMONDS revolves around the disaffected existence of of Firdaus (Tinka Menkes), a blackjack dealer whose world unfolds as a fragmented but hypnotic interplay between repetition and repressed anger.
Queen of Diamonds
Director of Photography
Set amid the glittering casino lights and deteriorating desert landscapes of the oasis city Las Vegas, QUEEN OF DIAMONDS revolves around the disaffected existence of of Firdaus (Tinka Menkes), a blackjack dealer whose world unfolds as a fragmented but hypnotic interplay between repetition and repressed anger.
Queen of Diamonds
Producer
Set amid the glittering casino lights and deteriorating desert landscapes of the oasis city Las Vegas, QUEEN OF DIAMONDS revolves around the disaffected existence of of Firdaus (Tinka Menkes), a blackjack dealer whose world unfolds as a fragmented but hypnotic interplay between repetition and repressed anger.
Queen of Diamonds
Writer
Set amid the glittering casino lights and deteriorating desert landscapes of the oasis city Las Vegas, QUEEN OF DIAMONDS revolves around the disaffected existence of of Firdaus (Tinka Menkes), a blackjack dealer whose world unfolds as a fragmented but hypnotic interplay between repetition and repressed anger.
Queen of Diamonds
Director
Set amid the glittering casino lights and deteriorating desert landscapes of the oasis city Las Vegas, QUEEN OF DIAMONDS revolves around the disaffected existence of of Firdaus (Tinka Menkes), a blackjack dealer whose world unfolds as a fragmented but hypnotic interplay between repetition and repressed anger.
Magdalena Viraga
Cinematography
Story of A Red Sea Crossing. Shot in the bars and seedy hotels of East LA, this film is about the inner life of a prostitute imprisoned for killing her pimp.
Magdalena Viraga
Producer
Story of A Red Sea Crossing. Shot in the bars and seedy hotels of East LA, this film is about the inner life of a prostitute imprisoned for killing her pimp.
Magdalena Viraga
Director
Story of A Red Sea Crossing. Shot in the bars and seedy hotels of East LA, this film is about the inner life of a prostitute imprisoned for killing her pimp.
The Great Sadness of Zohara
Director
A young, orthodox Jewish woman is alienated from her Jerusalem community and drawn into the world of spirit.
A Soft Warrior
Director
Nina's first collaboration with her sister Tinka Menkes, the film documents, in a strange and beautiful way, a serious illness suffered by Tinka, and also expresses how art is a transformative response to life.