- Nina Menkes
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Nina Menkes is a woman filmmaker who has completed six feature films in which she controlled all aspects of production, including directing, writing, shooting, as well as editing picture and sound on her own productions.[1] She has worked in various media including Super-8, 16mm, 35mm and lately HD. Her films have often met with hostility, as she confronts and expresses violence in an unusual way, creating and following her own cinematic rules.[2]
According to film critic and historian Berenice Reynaud:
"[Menkes] does not inscribe herself in a recognizable avant-garde tradition, she has no master and no disciples, which forces her to reinvent the history of cinema in her own terms, to struggle alone with formal and conceptual issues. This loneliness – both æsthetic and economic – is also embedded in the texture of the work. Yet, it is not the cliché loneliness of the romantic victim – it is more akin to the “night of the soul” evoked by the mystics, Dante’s travel though a dark wood – or the heroic solitude of the knight-errant."[3]
For many years, Menkes worked closely with her sister Tinka Menkes, who was both her actress and creative collaborator. Their films were featured in major international film festivals including Sundance, Rotterdam, Locarno, London, Viennale, San Francisco, Edinburgh, Cairo and 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, LACMA and MOCA in Los Angeles.[4] Menkes was one of the first women to present a feature film at the Sundance Film Festival (Queen of Diamonds 1990 in dramatic competition).[5] She has received a Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award, 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 India.[6] Menkes was also a recipient of a DAAD Artist in Residence in Berlin Award, during which she tried to face her family history. Her mother's family were German Jews who fled Hitler's genocide; her father's Austrian Jewish family were gassed to death.[7] In 2002 Menkes shot and co-created a feature length, experimental documentary in Beirut, Lebanon, Massaker, about the Sabra and Shatila massacre, which premiered at the Berlinale in 2005 and received a FIPRESCI Award.[5]
Her most recent film Dissolution (2010), shot in Tel Aviv in Hebrew (with some Arabic) marked her first collaboration with the Israeli David Fire, a musician and philosopher, who played the lead role as well as collaborated with Menkes on writing and editing.[8] Menkes holds citizenship in Germany, USA and Israel.
Nina Menkes has an MFA from the UCLA Film School. She has taught film directing at the USC film school, and at the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII).She is member of the Directors Guild of America, and is currently a faculty member at California institute of the Arts[6]Filmography
- Dissolution (2010) 88 min/B&W/16:9 HD PAL
- Phantom Love (2007) 35mm film/87 minutes
- Massaker (2005) (co-director/director of photography) DV to 35mm/98 minutes
- The Crazy Bloody Female Centre (2000) CD-ROM/180 minutes
- The Bloody Child (1996) 35mm film/ 86 minutes
- Queen of Diamonds (1991) 35mm film/77 minutes
- Magdalena Viagra (1986) 16mm film/90 minutes
- The Great Sadness of Zohara (1983) 16mm film/40 minutes
- A Soft Warrior (1981) S-8 film/11 minutes
References
- ^ Cinemad: podcast #1: Nina Menkes
- ^ Nina Menkes' Dissolution and Phantom Love - Page 1 - Film+TV - Los Angeles - LA Weekly
- ^ Nina Menkes: The Warrior and her Jiang Hu | Senses of Cinema
- ^ Going Really Big - Los Angeles Times
- ^ a b Nina Menkes - Awards
- ^ a b Nina Menkes | Faculty/Staff Directory
- ^ Interview with Nina Menkes | Senses of Cinema
- ^ Transfax Film Productions – The Movie "Dissolution"
External links
- ninamenkes.com/films
- laweekly.com
- imdb.com
- sensesofcinema.com
- latimes.com
- boston phoenix.com
- huffingtonpost.com
- latimes.com
- variety.com
- reframe.com
(Radiant Light 03:22, 20 November 2011 (UTC))
Categories:- Living people
- Filmmakers
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