Trailer for her recent feature Dissolution.
Nina Menkes
***March 1 update: Listen to Menkes discuss the Cinema as Sorcery retrospective and her work on KCRW’s The Treatment podcast.
Anthology Film Archives in New York and UCLA Film Archives in Los Angeles have partnered for a month-long, bicoastal retrospective of the work of filmmaker and CalArts Faculty member Nina Menkes. The celebration kicks off in Los Angeles from Feb. 18 through March 7, and in New York from March 9-16. The retrospective features showings of Menkes’s past works alongside her most recent feature from 2010, Dissolution, which screens the entire week in New York. Menkes will participate in discussions after screenings in both cities.
Menkes, who was recently named one of the “few genuinely radical American directors” by the LA Weekly, has completed six feature films in which she controlled all aspects of production: producing, writing, directing, shooting and editing. Many of her projects have involved her sister, actress and creative collaborator Tinka Menkes. Her films have been shown widely in major international film festivals around the world, and she has received many honors including a Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, two Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, and an American Film Institute Independent Filmmaker Award.
The films included in the retrospective are:
- A Soft Warrior (1981)
- The Great Sadness of Zohara (1983)
- Magdalena Viraga (1986)
- Queen of Diamonds (1991)
- The Bloody Child (1996)
- Massaker (2002)
- Phantom Love (2007)
- Dissolution (2010)
The filmmaker is currently developing a new feature, Heatstroke, which will be shot in Cairo and Los Angeles later this year. The film is being executive produced by award-winning filmmaker Gus Van Sant. She’ll also guest on Elvis Mitchell’s radio show The Treatment on KCRW 89.9 in Los Angeles and other NPR stations on Feb. 29.
- Read the New York Times Sunday feature (Feb. 19) on Menkes: A Cinematic Sorceress of the Self.
Nina Menkes: Cinema as Sorcery
Billy Wilder Theater, Hammer Museum
10899 Wilshire Blvd, Los Angeles
Feb. 28 – March 7, 7 or 7:30 pm
Tickets: General $10 per screening
Nina Menkes Retrospective
Anthology Film Archives
32 Second Avenue (at 2nd St.), New York City
March 9-16, various times
Tickets: General $9 per screening