The Great Sadness of Zohara
Films by Nina Menkes
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39m
Directed by Nina Menkes | 38 mins | 1983
Departing Jerusalem for unknown, arid landscapes, the unnamed protagonist—played by Nina Menkes’ sister, Tinka, in the first of their collaborations—also drifts away, as if compelled by unseen forces, from her orthodox Jewish community and faith. This feminist inversion of Joseph Campbell’s “hero’s journey” is in some sense a mystical document of its own production: the two sisters traveled alone with their 16mm equipment through Israel and North Africa by bus.
Up Next in Films by Nina Menkes
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Magdalena Viraga
Directed by Nina Menkes | 90 mins | 1986
Menkes took home the Los Angeles Film Critics Association’s “Best Independent Film” prize with her hypnotic but disturbing debut feature, in which her sister Tinka plays Ida, a sex worker accused of killing her pimp. Moving between a string of seedy, East ... -
Queen of Diamonds
Directed by Nina Menkes | 77 mins | 1991
Set in a drab, grimly coruscating Las Vegas, "Queen of Diamonds" again situates Tinka Menkes, the filmmaker’s sister, as an icon of womankind’s profound estrangement under patriarchy. Her character, Firdaus—the name borrowed from the unrepentant murderess ... -
The Bloody Child
Directed by Nina Menkes | 85 mins | 1996
Described by critics as her most radical work and by the filmmaker as her greatest, the fifth film Nina Menkes made with her sister Tinka in the lead—here, a Marine captain overseeing a murder investigation out in the Mojave—would also be their final colla...
