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Brainwashed: Sex-Camera-Power – IntroductionIn this compelling cine-essay, Nina Menkes takes us through the history of the male gaze in cinema, unpicking the ‘powerful vortex of visual language’ that has defined popular cinema over the past century.
Taking Laura Mulvey’s seminal essay – ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ – as a starting point, Menkes draws from more than 175 film clips from canonical Hollywood favourites and cult classics as well as interviews with filmmakers and scholars to outline the many ways in which film reflects and reinforces patriarchal power structures.
By directly connecting the gendered visual language of cinema to real world discrimination and violence, Menkes constructs a characteristically provocative polemic about the ways in which the culture we consume unconsciously shapes our off-screen lives.
Tue 16 May, 15:30 – this screening will begin with an in-person introduction by Professor Laura Mulvey.
