Avant-garde alum Nina Menkes MFA '89 honored

The provocative personal filmmaker Nina Menkes MFA ’89 (ninamenkes.com/) was the subject in 2007 of a career retrospective at the Vienna International Film Festival, and in March 2008 of a tribute in the Australian online film journal Senses of Cinema. In an interview conducted for the festival catalog and reprinted in the magazine Menkes discusses her films—-which include Magdalena Viraga (1986), The Bloody Child (1996) and most recently Phantom Love (2007)—-and questions her reputation as a difficult “experimental” filmmaker:

“I see myself more in the tradition of filmmakers like Andrei Tarkovsky, Robert Bresson, Michelangelo Antonioni and Luis Buñuel, to name a few long-time favourites, versus the more non-narrative experimental short filmmakers … I have never identified myself as an ‘experimental’ filmmaker to myself, but rather as a film director, even though those are likely the people that understand me best, you are quite right. I have always been interested in certain radical forms of narrative, in character, and the expression of deep emotion. I want my films to be seen widely and on huge screens. I guess I really want to be Madonna, after all, not in content, but in reach – however, this is apparently an irresolvable contradiction. And it probably fuels my despair that I refuse to accept a small audience for my work.”

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Keywords

"nina menkes" "vienna international film festival" "andrei tarkovsky" "robert bresson" "michelangelo antonioni" 

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