Brainwashed

It is very difficult to remain indifferent while watching Nina Menkes’ BRAINWASHED: SEX-CAMERA-POWER. The film is a compelling and extensive analysis of how the industry of dreams contributed to a relentless objectification of women over many decades that eventually translated into a reality still marked by gender discrimination and abuse. Inspired by a lecture that Menkes has been giving for around 25 years now, the film version of “Sex and Power: The Visual Language of Oppression” features dozens of examples of how the very grammar of cinema, its “writing with light”, helped create an image of women essentially based on their attractiveness to the eyes of men. Menkes doesn’t spare the sacred names of cinema history and provokes her audience to face the dark side of timeless masterpieces. The topics that are raised while watching the movie are imperative for the definition of the 7th art and its very future and push us to ask ourselves who and what defines a masterpiece. If this issue has accompanied cinema across its entire history, BRAINWASHED lightens a gender perspective that will change our way of seeing movies for quite some time nonetheless. (Rebecca De Pas)