Film

One of the most jarringly original independent films of the 1990s, Nina Menkes’ lost underground classic reemerges in a gorgeous new restoration. In a neon-soaked dream vision of Las Vegas, a disaffected blackjack dealer (played by the director’s sister Tinka Menkes) drifts through a series of encounters alternately mundane, surreal, and menacing, while death and violence hover ever-present in the margins. Awash in lush, hallucinatory images, Queen of Diamonds is a haunting study of female alienation that “may become for America in the 90s what Jeanne Dielman was for Europe in the 70s—a cult classic using a rigorous visual composition to penetrate the innermost recesses of the soul” (Bérénice Reynaud, Chicago Reader).

Restored by the Academy Film Archive and The Film Foundation, with funding provided by the George Lucas Family Foundation.

Post-screening Q&A
Apr 26 (7pm screening): Post-screening Q&A with director Nina Menkes

Post-screening Presentation
Apr 27 (4pm screening): Post-screening talk Sex and Power: The Visual Language of Oppression by director Nina Menkes followed by a Q&A moderated by Maria Giese
Based on her viral Filmmaker Magazine article “The Visual Language of Oppression: Harvey Weinstein Wasn’t Working in a Vacuum,” Menkes’ Sex and Power examines the ways formal shot design is gendered. Analyzing a series of film clips by major filmmakers—including Scorsese, Welles, Spike Lee, and many others—Menkes shows how traditional cinematic language underlies and supports sexual assault, harassment, and employment discrimination against women. The presentation has appeared at Sundance, Cannes, and the AFI International Film Festival, and is currently being made into a feature length documentary. Maria Giese, who instigated the historic ACLU and EEOC investigations against the Hollywood studios’ Title VII violations, will moderate a discussion following the talk.