Synopsis
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.
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Cast
- Nina MenkesSelf
- Rosanna ArquetteSelf
- Penelope SpheerisSelf
- Catherine HardwickeSelf
- Julie DashSelf
- Sheila FrazierSelf
- Joey SolowaySelf
- Eliza HittmanSelf
- Laura MulveySelf
Recommendations
- 100
The Playlist
The film is accessible, engrossing, urgent, and horrifying. - 90
Film Threat
After watching the documentary, I hope that as critiques of the male gaze become more and more mainstream, audiences will see through the many cliches and understand the ideology objectifying women in cinema. And as they gaze back, I hope we all realize that they have complex stories to tell. - 80
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. - 70
Slashfilm
"Brainwashed" isn't so much of a shocking revelation as it is an eye-opening wake-up call to be more thoughtful about how women are depicted in film and how that translates into our everyday lives. - 70
Screen Daily
Brainwashed doesn’t deliver the opposing views you might like to see aired in a film like this - it’s not a debate for her, even though some film professionals still think it is - and Menkes shows possibly too many clips from her own films (as illustrations of the right sort of take), particularly as this lucid documentary draws to a close. Yet still it’s vigorous, often brash, and full of information. - 67
The Film Stage
Criticism can be poetry, but in Brainwashed: Sex-Camera-Power it is definitely prose, reserving the expressiveness for her own oeuvre. - 67
IndieWire
Menkes will often admit that many examples might be the result of unconscious choices — a particularly useful and astute notation when dealing with films directed by women, plenty of which contribute to the same gendered way of shooting — but rarely engages with the possibility of a different intent by the filmmakers whose work she is unpacking. - 50
The Hollywood Reporter
Clearly made with the best of didactic intentions, and especially affecting when paying tribute to “original gangster” film theorist Laura Mulvey, interviewed all too briefly here, the film is founded on a simplistic, poorly argued thesis that is way out to sea, many waves of feminist film theory behind from what’s going on these days in academic circles and feminist discourse.
