Nina Menkes

Profile

Nina Menkes screened and discussed PHANTOM LOVE at the Savoy. She also spoke more in depth about her body of work in a lecture titled Yes! I am a Witch.

Menkes synthesizes inner dream worlds with harsh, outer realities. Hailed as “one of the greatest figures in new wave feminist cinema” at her recent retrospective at the Viennale, and “brilliant, one of the most provocative artists in film today” by The Los Angeles Times, her six features are a body of work Sight and Sound has called “controversial, intense and visually stunning.” Menkes’ award-winning films have shown widely in major international film festivals including Sundance, Rotterdam, Locarno, London, the Viennale, San Francisco, the Berlinale, Cairo, Toronto, as well as at La Cinematheque Francaise, The British Film Institute, the ICA in London, the Beijing Film Academy in China, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, MOCA and LACMA in Los Angeles. Menkes’ many honors include a Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for her first feature MAGDLAENA VIRAGA, a Guggenheim Fellowship, two Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, an Annenberg Foundation Independent Media Grant, an American Film Institute Independent Filmmaker Award, three Western States Regional Media Arts Fellowships and two Senior Fulbright Research Awards—one to the Middle East/North Africa, and one to Israel.

In addition, her work has been listed on many periodicals’ Top Ten Films of the Year lists, including Film Comment and, repeatedly, The Los Angeles Times. Her feature length, experimental documentary shot in Beirut, Lebanon, Massaker, about the Sabra and Shatilla massacre, premiered at the Berlinale in 2005 and received a FIPRESCI Award. Menkes’ black and white drama PHANTOM LOVE, premiered at Sundance 2007 to critical raves, and has continued to show worldwide to significant acclaim.