On the eve of the BFI London Film Festival THE FACE interviews Nina Menkes about her explosive new documentary

On the eve of this year’s BFI London Film Festival, THE FACE interviews visionary director Nina Menkes about her new documentary BRAINWASHED: SEX-CAMERA-POWER, to find out “whether Hollywood is fully having the post-#MeToo reckoning it so needs.”

Felicity Martin: “A powerful moment in Brainwashed is when you bring your own life into it, your experiences of dating as a young woman while being a go-getting filmmaker, and suddenly feeling like you’ve gone from subject to object. What’s that been like to work through?

Nina Menkes: “I don’t think I’ve fully worked through it, ever. As women we’re so indoctrinated and we’ve learned that this issue of [having to be] flawlessly beautiful is something that’s very hard to shake free of. And when you get older… I’m no longer in the ​“young hot babe” category, you know – then you get in the invisible category! [laughs]

When I started making Brainwashed, I thought maybe the idea is that we need to integrate subject and object. But then I realised, no, that’s wrong. Just be a subject, the way men are allowed to be full-on human subjects who also have a sexual part of their life and a sexual part of who they are. It doesn’t turn them into an object, it’s just part of who they are.

We as women have so much associated sexuality with being in the object position, that it’s very difficult to shake that off.”

Read the full interview from The Face Magazine by Felicity Martin.

Brainwashed: Sex-Camera-Power screens on 15th and 16th October at London Film Festival. Ticket info.

It will be released in the UK in spring 2023.