THE BLOODY CHILD / QUEEN OF DIAMONDS + Short “The Great Sadness of Zohara”

ABOUT THE FILMS

THE BLOODY CHILD, 1996, Arbelos Films, 85 min, USA, Dir: Nina Menkes. 

Nina Menkes turns the arrest of a young US Marine – recently returned from the Gulf War and found digging a grave for his murdered wife in the middle of the Mojave desert – into a harrowing hallucinatory and mesmerizing look at the desolation of violence. Shot in North Africa and 29 Palms, California THE BLOODY CHILD chillingly illustrates how people lose all human, moral and ethical limits under punishing circumstances of civil war.

New restoration by The Academy Film Archive and The Film Foundation with funding provided by the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation.  

FORMAT: DCP

“The Great Sadness of Zohara,” 1983, Arbelos Films, 38 min, Israel, Dir: Nina Menkes. 

Shot on location in Israel and North Africa, THE GREAT SADNESS OF ZOHARA traces the solitary, mystical journey of a Jewish girl (Tinka Menkes), who leaves Jerusalem for Arab lands. The film was created entirely by director Nina Menkes and her sister Tinka, on a budget of under $7,000 and won awards at the San Francisco and Houston International Film Festivals.

New restoration. 

FORMAT: DCP

QUEEN OF DIAMONDS, 1991, Arbelos Films, 77 min, USA, Dir: Nina Menkes. 

QUEEN OF DIAMONDS follows the alienated life of Firdaus (Tinka Menkes), a Blackjack dealer in a Las Vegas landscape juxtaposed between glittering casino lights and the deteriorating desert oasis. Negotiating a missing husband and neighboring domestic violence, Firdaus’ world unfolds as a fragmented but hypnotic interplay between repetition and repressed anger. Shot with a beautiful compositional rigor echoing Chantal Akerman’s JEANNE DIELMAN, QUEEN OF DIAMONDS is a remarkable and demanding masterpiece of American independent filmmaking.

New restoration by The Academy Film Archive and The Film Foundation with funding provided by the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation. 

FORMAT: DCP