Screening: Queen of Diamonds

Over the past 30 years “cinematic sorceress” Nina Menkes has produced a visually stunning and uncompromising body of work that stands alone in the landscape of American Independent cinema. Fearlessly confronting violence, female subjectivity and isolation in iconically lensed locales ranging from the American Southwest to Israel and North Africa, Menkes work only becomes more vital and relevant with the passage of time.

Produced, written, directed, and shot by Menkes, Queen of Diamonds follows the alienated life of Firdaus (played by the director’s sister and early muse, Tinka Menkes), as 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. Heralded as one of the most challenging and subversive filmmakers working today, the restoration and re-release of this film marks the start of a new critical recognition for Menkes’ groundbreaking body of work.

“[Menkes’] provocative and visually arresting art films hover between experimental and narrative, fearlessly exploring the alienated feminine, the subconscious and violent patriarchal outer realities…” –Sight & Sound