In this compelling cine-essay, Nina Menkes takes us through the history of the male gaze in film, 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 her point of departure, Menkes draws on a rich pool of clips and interviewees, including Mulvey, Julie Dash, Eliza Hittman and Joey Soloway, to outline the many ways in which film reflects and reinforces patriarchal power structures.

By directly connecting gendered shot design and aesthetics 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.

Described by IndiWire as a film that is 'Destined to forever change how you look at films', Brainwashed will be released in the UK on Blu-ray by Eureka! Entertainment on 17 July 2023 at the RRP of £19.99.

BLU-RAY FEATURES:

• Presented in High Definition
• Audio commentary by director Nina Menkes and editor Cecily Rhett
• Nina Menkes in Conversation (2023, 31 mins): the director looks back over her career with writer and curator Rachel Pronger. Recorded at BFI Southbank
• UK theatrical trailer
• First pressing only: illustrated booklet with a director's statement, essays by Sarah Wood and Kenneth Reveiz, an interview feature by Sophia Satchell-Baeza, first published in Sight and Sound, and credits for the feature