LE MONDE reviews BRAINWASHED: SEX-CAMERA-POWER before release on Arte in Germany and France

Mouna El Mokhtari reviews BRAINWASHED: SEX-CAMERA-POWER for Le Monde:

“The documentary does more than simply make visible and legible a patriarchal norm that is perpetuated in a more or less conscious and subliminal way. ‘You really get the impression that the cinematic visual language that surrounds us corresponds to the basic language of rape culture’, stresses the director, who sets out to demonstrate the cyclical links between this language and, on the one hand, sexist discrimination in the world of work and, on the other, the omnipresence of sexual violence in our society.

In 2018, only 8% - compared with 9% twenty years earlier - of the 250 most popular films were directed by women. And 94% of women working in the Hollywood industry - from which 80% of the world's ‘entertainment’ content originates - have experienced sexual assault or harassment in their careers.

Nina Menkes' documentary is a refreshing experiment in the political significance of cinema, offering a powerful reflection on the way in which gender is viewed and represented, drawing on the legacies of Michel Foucault, Bel Hooks (the pen name of Gloria Jean Watkins) and Audre Lorde. At once a creative invitation to imagine other codes, representations, characters and filmmaking, it is just as much a work of cinema in that it multiplies the levels of reading, questions the viewer's gaze and formulates pertinent leads.”

BRAINWASHED is out now ON ARTE in Germany and France.

Read the orignal review in French in Le Monde.