MA:<\/b> I am aware that the path of art and filmmaking during your adolescence was neither an easy nor an easily attainable one. As a woman, young girls had to fight against many taboos to realize their dreams, thoughts, and creativity. Could you talk a little about your childhood and teenage years, and how that past has shaped who you are today?<\/span><\/p>\n Nina Mekes<\/p><\/div>\n NM:<\/b> My mother’s parents were German Jews. When Hitler came to power in 1933, they left Berlin and went to Jerusalem, which was at that time the British Mandate, Palestine. So my mother actually grew up there in British Mandate Palestine. On my father’s side, he was born in Vienna, Austria, to a Jewish family. All of his family was killed in the Nazi concentration camps. He was rescued by a resistance group that helped save children and brought them to Jerusalem. So, both my parents grew up, met and got married in Jerusalem. They left almost immediately after getting married for the US to study at New York University. I grew up in the US, but I speak Hebrew, and almost every summer, growing up, we would visit my mother’s family. My father had no living family.<\/span><\/p>\n If you spend time in Israel and are even a little sensitive, you naturally become curious about the Arab world. I started learning Arabic when I was 18, and I\u2019ve made many films in that region. It’s a big part of my life. In terms of my background, I identify primarily as an American, but I\u2019ve spent significant time in that part of the world.<\/span><\/p>\n On the creative side, I was a dancer and choreographer as a teenager, so I had an early sense of how movement, visuals, and sound come together. I also had a natural talent for photography, and when I got the opportunity to make a short film, I was very excited. I felt like it was the right path for me. I applied to UCLA film school, and when I was accepted, I felt as though I had come home\u2014not to a physical place, but to my true home. Filmmaking, for me, isn\u2019t just a career; it\u2019s a vocation.<\/span><\/p>\n Mania Akbari<\/p><\/div>\n MA:<\/b> It is very interesting because it is quite evident in your films that you have a profound understanding of form and composition. The films are not merely in service of storytelling and narrative; there is a certain visual pleasure and deep aesthetic present in every scene, which elevates the work beyond mere storytelling. Let’s talk about your first film. What happened? You had a camera and started making it\u2014I think your first film was in 1981, is that right? It was a Super 8 film.<\/span><\/p>\n NM:<\/b> Yes, a Super 8 film, 11 minutes long, titled <\/span>A Soft Warrior<\/span><\/i>. I made it at the UCLA film school. Back then, the school was quite different. It’s more structured now, but at the time, it was almost like a hippie school. They had equipment and taught us how to use cameras, do sound, edit\u2014all the technical things. But for someone like me, who had a strong sense of what I wanted to do, I wasn’t interested in learning from the masters. I just wanted to do my own thing, and there was a real space for that.<\/span><\/p>\n The first project we did in film school was called Project One, and it was a Super 8 film. I wanted to make a film about my sister, who had been very ill and was still living at home with my mother. I went back to their house with the plan to have my sister, Tinka, play herself as a sick person. I had cast another woman to play me as her sister, and it was going to be a sort of hallucination about her illness and our relationship.<\/span><\/p>\n However, the actress who was supposed to play me didn\u2019t show up\u2014it was a Super 8 student film, after all. My sister had just recovered from being very ill, and I suggested finding someone else to play me while she would play herself as sick. She refused, saying she didn\u2019t want to play a sick person after just getting well\u2014it felt like bad karma to her. So I said, \u201cOkay, perfect. You’ll play me, and we\u2019ll find someone else to play you.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n That was the start of our collaboration, though we didn\u2019t know at the time how powerful it would be. We just did it. But when we looked at the Super 8 dailies, it was clear\u2014me on camera, and Tinka\u2019s presence as a performer\u2014that it was very powerful and striking. That was the beginning of an unplanned collaboration, and we went on to make five films together.<\/span><\/p>\n MA:<\/b> In the film <\/span>The Great Sadness of Zohara<\/span><\/i>, we encounter a woman wandering in an unfamiliar city, transcending the constraints traditionally imposed on women. She appears as a being detached from the fabric of society, driven by curiosity and a desire for exploration in life. With indifference and beyond the realm of judgment, she seeks to experience herself within the city, its buildings, homes, and spaces. In a way, she is perceived as a mad and homeless woman by the people around her, indifferent to their gazes as she continues on her path\u2014a path towards being. The film is feminist to me as well. Let\u2019s talk about <\/span>The Great Sadness of Zohara<\/span><\/i> (16mm\/40 minutes\/1983). I really love the film\u2014it really affected me. What led you to make this film?<\/span><\/p>\n NM:<\/b> Well, you know, I didn\u2019t have any background in feminist theory. I hadn’t heard of it, but I had my own feelings and experiences, and I was very influenced by my mother. She had been in Jungian psychoanalysis, and much later, I also did 17 years of Jungian analysis. My mother influenced me with the Jungian idea of archetypal journeys. There was this book that was quite famous at the time, <\/span>The Hero with a Thousand Faces<\/span><\/i> by Joseph Campbell. I don\u2019t know if you\u2019ve heard of it, but people like George Lucas and Steven Spielberg have said they were influenced by it. The book shows the hero\u2019s journey, with Campbell finding similarities across myths and fairy tales from different cultures across time.<\/span><\/p>\n I thought, \u201cOkay, I\u2019m going to create my own hero\u2019s journey.\u201d But I wasn\u2019t a man, and my main character would be a woman. I had seen several films about characters from Third World countries, like from Africa, coming to Europe and experiencing adventures, both positive and negative. I wanted to flip that idea. I wanted to make a film about a white woman on a quest into the Third World. The character would be a Jewish woman from Jerusalem who embarks on a journey into the Arab world. That concept also reflected my own experience\u2014I speak Hebrew and have a background in Israel. For many people who come from that space, the Arab world is viewed as the \u201cOther,\u201d and even as the enemy.<\/span><\/p>\n So my character, this Jewish woman, would go into the so-called \u201cOther Side\u201d and then return home to Jerusalem, victorious. That was my original, conscious idea, following the Campbell hero’s journey where the hero goes into a foreign, strange world, kills the dragon, finds the princess, returns home, and becomes King. I thought, \u201cMy character will do the same.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n But I work very intuitively. We began this journey in North Africa with no money\u2014just me with the camera, Tinka, a suitcase of costumes, and the film. We traveled by bus, stayed in $2-a-night hotels. It was one of the most beautiful experiences of my life\u2014pure cinema, pure intuition.<\/span><\/p>\n After filming the North African scenes, we traveled back to Jerusalem, and stayed with my great aunt in Jerusalem\u2014I was ready to film the triumphant ending. Tinka and I went out to shoot, and I tried to capture these victorious shots\u2014like \u201cTinka\u2019s Head and the Dome of the Rock.\u201d Or other \u201ctriumphant\u201d images. But everything felt wrong. I didn\u2019t shoot anything. I couldn’t push \u201cgo\u201d on the camera. I went home and realized the next morning, \u201cOh my God, the end is not victorious!\u201d So we went back out and shot the real ending.<\/span><\/p>\n Later, I read a wonderful essay\u2014though I can\u2019t remember the title\u2014about women’s quest fiction. It explained that women\u2019s journeys don\u2019t follow the hero\u2019s journey. A woman on a deep inner quest doesn\u2019t return and get crowned as \u201cQueen\u201d. Instead, she is re-accommodated to her secondary status. When I read that, I understood my film. But at the time, it was created in a completely intuitive way.<\/span><\/p>\n Looking back, I feel that\u2019s still true in my life. I\u2019ve struggled deeply, made films with integrity, and received acclaim, but I\u2019m still fighting. I have a new film I want to make, but it feels impossible to get funding. A man with my credentials and resume would never in a million years face this situation.<\/span><\/p>\n MA<\/b>: What a beautiful story. I completely agree, and it feels as though the world is enveloped by masculine power and the dominance of the cis-male authority. Our mission is to bring about a balance, through our presence, relentless creation, perseverance, and care. Perhaps, this way, future generations will not endure the suffering we faced and can engage with more just and equitable matters.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Another film you made is <\/span>Magdalena Viraga<\/span><\/i>, (16mm\/90 minutes\/1986). I wanted to know, this time, which book\u2014I mean, a feminist book\u2014affected you? Of course, at that time, it was the peak of the second wave of feminism, and I wanted to know because the film is so feminist, and it’s amazing.<\/span><\/p>\n NM<\/b>: Well, there were two things that really affected me. The first actually happened after I showed <\/span>The Great Sadness of Zohara<\/span><\/i> at UCLA. A huge crowd came, which was amazing\u2014they even had to add an extra screening. But after the screening, a lot of Jewish people came up to me, saying things like, \u201cWhy is this woman so sad? Why is she so alienated? Don\u2019t you feel happy in Israel? What do you know about Judaism anyway?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n So, I started thinking, \u201cMaybe I really don\u2019t know much about Judaism.\u201d I mean, I speak Hebrew because of my family, and I\u2019d been to Israel many times, but I didn\u2019t have a deep understanding of the religion itself. My family were secular German Jews, so I hadn\u2019t grown up religious.<\/span><\/p>\n After that, I decided to learn more, so I went on a program that offered a free trip to Israel if you studied at a yeshiva for six weeks. I figured, why not? I wanted to visit my mom and sister there anyway. So, I spent six weeks at this yeshiva for women. But, the first thing I noticed was that the men had this beautiful place to study in the Old City, overlooking the Wailing Wall, while the women were stuck in this tiny, horrible apartment in a run-down building near the central bus station. And then there were a number of experiences that really stuck with me. Like when we went to the beach, all the American girls were in bathing suits, but the woman leading us was completely covered, even in the water. She couldn\u2019t swim at all, she was dragged down by wet garments, came out covered in sand, and I thought, \u201cThis just doesn\u2019t feel like God to me.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Another time, it was boiling hot, no air conditioning, and we were learning a song. Suddenly, the teacher stopped us and said we had to close all the windows because a man might hear our voices and get excited. So, we closed the windows and were suffocating in the heat. And again, I thought, \u201cThis isn\u2019t God for me.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n It wasn\u2019t a mosque or anything. It was just an apartment where we studied. Very, very traditional. So anyway, I was just thinking alot about organized religion and how anti-feminist it was. When I came back to the US, I also found this wonderful book called <\/span>The Politics of Women\u2019s Spirituality<\/span><\/i>. It’s an anthology put together by Charlene Spretnak in the eighties, and it\u2019s still an incredible collection. In that anthology, I discovered a writer called Mary Daly, who wrote <\/span>Beyond God the Father<\/span><\/i>, which affected me very, very deeply. I was also reading Gertrude Stein at the time, and all of that came together for me\u2014the idea of how women are excluded from traditional religious structures and how deeply sexist these constructions are. All of that sort went into a big soup that ended up becoming <\/span>Magdalena Viraga<\/span><\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n MA<\/b>: Wow! What an amazing story. I understand your progression better now.<\/span><\/p>\n NM<\/b>: Yeah. But on a deeper level, I also thought about the issue of the hero’s journey, right? The way Joseph Campbell defines it, it’s really an imperialist journey. You have someone, typically a man, who leaves home, ventures into foreign lands, slays the dragon, takes the treasure, and returns home victorious. This is almost a blueprint for imperialism and colonialism. But what happens to the people in those other places after he steals their treasure and goes home? We never look at that. These were some of the thoughts I was grappling with.<\/span><\/p>\n So, in <\/span>The Great Sadness of Zohara<\/span><\/i>, the character Tinka tries to go on this hero’s quest. She tries to come home and be victorious, but she\u2019s not\u2014because she’s really stuck in that other place, the place where she’s been raped and stolen from.<\/span><\/p>\n Magdalena Viraga<\/span><\/i> is that \u201cother place.\u201d You could say that <\/span>The Great Sadness of Zohara<\/span><\/i> was my attempt at a hero’s quest, but it collided with my intuition. And <\/span>Magdalena Viraga<\/span><\/i> is when she’s fully in that place that’s been plundered, where she’s been raped. She is rejecting those structures. She\u2019s claiming her power when she says, \u201cYes, I am a witch.\u201d It’s her way of asserting her strength against the systems that have violated her.<\/span><\/p>\n If I look at the films that I’ve made as a whole, starting from the first one all the way through, they really track a different process\u2014one that\u2019s very different from the hero’s journey that Joseph Campbell made famous. In that narrative, the man leaves home, conquers, plunders, and returns home famous. But this isn\u2019t the journey of the woman on a quest.<\/span><\/p>\n When a woman tries to go on a journey, she expects to be crowned a queen after all her hard work, but instead, she\u2019s pushed back down into her secondary status. <\/span>Magdalena Viraga<\/span><\/i> really represents her being on that other side\u2014inside that plundered land. She is there, and she\u2019s the one being plundered.<\/span><\/p>\n MA<\/b>: Another film you made is <\/span>Queen of Diamonds <\/span><\/i>(35mm\/77 minutes\/ 1991): A woman works in a casino, and the cuts to nature with its brilliant structure are interspersed with the scenes. An old, sick man lies bedridden, symbolizing the looming presence of death, while the woman, who works in the casino, continues to care for him. The film delicately and with subtle suspense leads us through moments in life that cinema often avoids. A car accident and a death occur softly, quietly, without dramatizing the situation. The film\u2019s delicacy and depth in juxtaposing moments of life and death invite us to a kind of acceptance. The woman, the film’s main character (played by Tinka Menkes), serves both as a witness and a storyteller, in a state of detachment, removed from overflowing emotions or tangible suffering. She presents us with seemingly indifferent situations, which in some way become catalysts for experiencing a shared, collective wisdom. A death occurs, and shortly after, a wedding is shown in beautiful sunlight, painted with vibrant colors. We are distant from everything, yet simultaneously close. Altogether, these elements create a brilliant work. I wanted to know, in 1991, you changed from 16mm to 35mm. Tell me, what happened? Why did you change the technique from 16mm to 35mm?<\/span><\/p>\n NM<\/b>: Well, I was quite surprised because my film <\/span>Magdalena Viraga<\/span><\/i> won a huge prize\u2014the Los Angeles Film Critics Award. It was crazy for me, a very young woman, with my first feature made for $5,000 while still in film school. And I won this big award, and the film showed in festivals all over the world, including Toronto and others. Yet, nobody called. No offers. No one said, \u201cWould you like money to make a new film?\u201d Nothing.<\/span><\/p>\n And that\u2019s the sexism I\u2019m still experiencing today. So, I decided I wouldn\u2019t wait for anyone to give me money because nobody was offering. I wanted to shoot on 35mm because I wanted that quality, that beauty\u2014for both the visuals and the sound. I wrote the script and got some small grants. You know, in Europe, you can get $500,000 or a million dollars or even $5 million for films. But in the US, I got every little grant available. A Guggenheim Fellowship was $25,000, an AFI fellowship was around $15,000. Very small amounts.<\/span><\/p>\n So the only way I could make the film was by begging. And that\u2019s what I did. I got on the phone and asked, \u201cCan I please have a camera for two weeks? I\u2019m a woman filmmaker, just graduated from film school. Can I have free donuts, and I\u2019ll give you credit on the film?\u201d I just kept asking for things.<\/span><\/p>\n For example, I wanted to shoot in a real casino. Everyone told me, \u201cYou can\u2019t shoot in a real casino, you have to build one.\u201d But I had no money to build a casino, and it wasn\u2019t my style\u2014I like the strange documentary-narrative combination. So, I decided to try anyway.<\/span><\/p>\n To make a long story short, I called all these casinos in Las Vegas, and I found one where the owner was a film buff. He said, \u201cYeah, come up, talk to me.\u201d So I drove up, met the guy, and he gave us two weeks of hotel rooms for the cast and crew, free access to the casino, and other things. Everything we got for <\/span>Queen of Diamonds<\/span><\/i> was free\u2014free lunch, free water, everything.<\/span><\/p>\n It was ironic because the film is about money and capitalism, and we made it through donations. But of course, I made no money on the film. I had no salary, I paid the crew a small amount, and paid myself nothing. Now the film has become a classic. It was recently inducted into the Library of Congress, the National Film Registry. This is a huge honor.\u00a0 But when we made it, we got nothing\u2014no money, nothing.<\/span><\/p>\n MA<\/b>: I think this hasn\u2019t changed.<\/span><\/p>\n NM<\/b>: Correct, it\u2019s exactly the same.<\/span><\/p>\n MA<\/b>: Now I have exactly the same problem. Each film, no money, just begging again. How about the next film? <\/span>The Bloody Child<\/span><\/i> (35mm\/86 minutes\/1996): The music, poetry, and narration, boldly placed over the film\u2019s sympathetic yet sometimes violent moments, create a meaningful contrast. We are confronted with several men and soldiers, while in juxtaposition, we observe a woman, naked and free in the forest. These two parallel lines driving the story forward feel like a rift, insisting on warning us about the darkness of the circumstances. Tell us about this important film.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n NM<\/b>: In terms of this progression I\u2019ve been discussing, <\/span>The Bloody Child<\/span><\/i> represents a further descent into hell. The journey starts with <\/span>Zohara<\/span><\/i>, who tries to go on a quest but fails. In <\/span>Magdalena Viraga<\/span><\/i>, she’s already in the underworld, and while she speaks a lot of poetry, it\u2019s not her own voice. She’s borrowing the words of other people\u2014like Gertrude Stein and other female writers.<\/span><\/p>\n Then, in <\/span>Queen of Diamonds<\/span><\/i>, it gets worse because the protagonist almost stops speaking altogether. It’s as though she\u2019s lost the desire to even borrow other people’s words, and she becomes mute.<\/span><\/p>\n With <\/span>The Bloody Child<\/span><\/i>, the descent reaches a point of psychic disintegration\u2014a final, almost suicidal collapse under the weight of patriarchal and military violence. The structure of this film is radical; it circles, over and over, almost like a spiral. There’s a phrase the police use in English: \u201ccircling the drain\u201d\u2014when someone is about to die, they say they\u2019re circling the drain. This is what happens in <\/span>The Bloody Child<\/span><\/i>. It’s this constant circling, and you see these characters\u2014mostly men, but there are two women\u2014trying to deal with violence.<\/span><\/p>\n One of these women is Tinka, the marine captain, who tries to solve the problem of being a woman in this violent, patriarchal world by behaving like one of the men. She tries to embody that power, but it doesn\u2019t work. You see her in these spaces where she seems almost suicidal.<\/span><\/p>\n Then there\u2019s the other woman, the princess-like character who was murdered\u2014this sweet, childlike figure. Some people have said the voice-over in the film sounds like a child talking. But in reality, this character is 23 years old, and her innocence doesn\u2019t protect her. Being cute and small, being sweet\u2014none of that saves her from patriarchal violence. She ends up dead.<\/span><\/p>\n MA<\/b>: That\u2019s exactly true, yes. Tell me about the next film. You had a big gap between 1996 and 2005. Around nine years you didn\u2019t make any film. Then the next film\u00a0 called <\/span>Massacre<\/span><\/i> (35mm\/98 min\/2005): An experimental documentary feature. This film explores brutal violence through in-depth interviews with six mass murderers, who participated personally in the 1982 Sabra and Shatilla massacre, twenty years after the fact. Shot entirely on location in Beirut, Lebanon.Why didn’t you make a new film for such a long time?<\/span><\/p>\n NM<\/b>: Well, there are two big reasons. The main reason, really, is \u2026 first of all, no one wanted to give me any money, as usual. But the other thing is this descent into hell, which the films tracked\u2014especially <\/span>The Bloody Child<\/span><\/i>\u2014and it followed Tinka\u2019s character. Tinka is a brilliant performer. One of the things so brilliant about her is that she\u2019s not acting. She\u2019s really there; she becomes the character completely. And the process of creating <\/span>The Bloody Child<\/span><\/i>, with its fragmented, almost suicidal energy, was so emotionally devastating that Tinka said, \u201cI can\u2019t do this anymore.\u201d It was just too much for her.<\/span><\/p>\n For me, that was difficult to absorb because she and I had been on this cinematic path together for so long. I couldn\u2019t just turn around and say, \u201cOkay, I\u2019ll find someone else next year.\u201d No, it wasn\u2019t like that. I had to process and absorb the reality of not working with Tinka anymore. <\/span>The Bloody Child<\/span><\/i> pushed us to the limit\u2014formally, emotionally, and psychically\u2014into a very extreme point of fragmentation and suicidal energy. So, after that, Tinka just couldn\u2019t continue. It was too hard for her. That\u2019s really why there was such a long gap.<\/span><\/p>\n Massacre<\/span><\/i> was a documentary, so it’s very different. And I was the director of photography and co-director. It wasn’t completely my own film, but in many ways, it still looks like my films and feels like my films because I was in control of the whole mise en sc\u00e8ne and all the visuals. I brought much of myself to the directing as well. But in any case, it was a documentary film about the mass murders in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Beirut, Lebanon, where the Palestinian people were massacred. The film won a FIPRESCI prize at the Berlinale and many other awards. It’s definitely a horrific film in the sense of exposing the violence and the hatred towards Palestinians by the at the time Christian followers of Bashi Gemayal. It took until 2007 for me to make another fiction film.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n MA<\/b>: Let\u2019s talk about <\/span>Phantom Love<\/span><\/i> (35mm film\/87 minutes\/B&W\/2007). A surreal psychodrama about a young woman trapped within a suffocating family, <\/span>Phantom Love<\/span><\/i> is a powerful evocation of one woman\u2019s descent into self. A stunning story filmed in black and white, enveloped in a mesmerizing surreal atmosphere. What led you to decide to work in black and white, leaving behind the use of vibrant colors and colorful spaces? In a way, each frame of this film is like an extraordinary black-and-white photograph that serves the story.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n NM<\/b>: <\/span>Phantom Love<\/span><\/i> was interesting because I started working on the script, and I was writing about this woman who was in some ways similar to the woman that I had been tracking through all my films\u2014who had always, of course, been played by Tinka. There were scenes of her having very alienated sex, and there were scenes of her working in a casino in my script.<\/span><\/p>\n The alienated sex scenes were very similar to those in <\/span>Magdalena Viraga<\/span><\/i>, and the casino scenes were, in some ways, reminiscent of <\/span>Queen of Diamonds<\/span><\/i>. And as I was working on the script, there came a point where I thought, \u201cOh my god, I can\u2019t stand it. It\u2019s just more of this terrible alienation.\u201d I felt this character needed to break free somehow, but I didn\u2019t know how to make that happen. You see, I always create my films intuitively, so if I wasn\u2019t feeling free myself, I couldn\u2019t write about a free woman.<\/span><\/p>\n Around that time, I met an Iraqi Jewish woman while I was visiting my mother in Jerusalem. She was ostensibly a \u201clife coach,\u201d but as I discovered very quickly she had a deeper practice and was actually a shamanic healer. We began working together. Our sessions were a blend of shamanic journeying and psychotherapy: it was very profound. The whole system is based on visual interior journeying. I ended up staying in Jerusalem for six months, seeing her three times a week. During this time, I experienced what felt like lucid dreaming, and many of the images for <\/span>Phantom Love<\/span><\/i> came to me through this process.<\/span><\/p>\n I\u2019m really not sure why I felt the film should be in black and white. It was an intuitive decision and reflecting back it still seems right.<\/span><\/p>\n I always say that <\/span>Phantom Love<\/span><\/i> is a film in three acts: Act one shows the alienated woman, trapped in a frozen state, having alienated sex and performing alienated labor. Act two lasts maybe one minute or less, where she levitates above the bed. That scene was an homage to Tarkovsky\u2019s <\/span>The Mirror<\/span><\/i>![\"\"](\"https:\/\/redcutcollective.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/IMAGE-2024-11-04-172056-150x150.jpg\")
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