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Brainwashed: Sex-Camera-Power

2022

Nina Menkes

Documentary, Self: Catherine Hardwicke, Kathleen Antonia, Rosanna Arquette ...

6.2

231

Documentary 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.

	Media	Author	Review
		Nick Allen rogerebert.com	"'Brainwashed: Sex-Camera-Power' will be completely eye-opening for some, and for others it will at least be a needed reminder to pay closer attention. Either way, 'Brainwashed' is bound to make one a better film viewer"
		Kate Erbland IndieWire	"The film encourages not just a new way of looking but a new way of seeing — and that includes realizing that not everything worth watching has to be perfect for an audience to take something way from it."
		Leslie Felperin The Hollywood Reporter	"The film is founded on a simplistic, poorly argued thesis (...) 'Brainwashed' seems very concerned with policing viewer pleasure and has no time to explore the complexity of desire the way, for instance,
		David Katz The Film Stage	"'Brainwashed' should help some viewers’ understanding of what they’ve only cursorily considered while irritating others with its didacticism."
		Chloe Walker Paste Magazine	"Women are treated as a homogeneous mass of delicate flowers who wither away under even the briefest glance from a man. (...) It enforces victimhood on women who are anything but victims."
		Fionnuala Halligan Screendaily	"'Brainwashed' is a documentary for any woman in film who ever wanted, just even for a moment, to throw a grenade at the canon: Nina Menkes has the ammunition"
		Clayton Dillard Slant	"The problem with [the film] is that Menkes insists on drastically simplifying what's clearly a complicated subject, especially at the level of the image (...) 'Brainwashed: Sex-Camera-Power' feels thorough in its scope (...) Rating: ★★ (out of 4)"
		Lena Wilson The Playlist	"'Brainwashed' hits all of the most important notes for any activist documentary. The film is accessible, engrossing, urgent, and horrifying. It should be shown at film festivals, in classrooms, in boardrooms"
		Peter Bradshaw The Guardian	"'Brainwashed' is a bracing blast of critical rigour, taking a clear, cool look at the unexamined assumptions behind what we see on the screen. (...) Rating: ★★★★ (out of 5)"
		Elizabeth Weitzman The Wrap	"Nina Menkes’ fascinating examination of the visual language of the movies should be seen by anyone who loves or cares about film"
		Sarah Jane Austin Chronicle	"Hollywood has a long way to go in terms of parity for women (...) These are all good points, but 'Brainwashed: Sex-Camera-Power' isn’t doing it the best way possible (...) Rating: ★★½ (out of 5)"
		Marya E. Gates rogerebert.com	"Menkes wants to prove her own tenuous narrative so badly that she relies on bad faith arguments, ahistorical information, and cherry-picked scenes used out of context (…) Rating: ★ (out of 4)"

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