Based on her acclaimed talk "Sex & Power: The Visual Language of Cinema", director Nina Menkes compels the casual moviegoer and cinephile alike to confront how the visual language of cinema (POV, framing, camera movement, lighting, and even sound design) has functioned to perpetuate the sexist binary throughout cinematic history, and is used to disempower women at the most fundamental level.

Feminist film theorists have been exploring the issue of the "male gaze" and its various nuances and implications for decades. The term “male gaze” was first used in 1975 by Laura Mulvey, who is also a key interviewee in the film.

Using more than 175 film clips from canonical Hollywood favourites and cult classics, from 1896 through to the present, as well as interviews with filmmakers including Julie Dash (Daughters of the Dust), Joey Soloway (Transparent) and scholars, Brainwashed: Sex-Camera-Power reveals a sinister framework of misogyny and paternalism that, from early cinema to the present day, infiltrates some of our best loved and iconic films.

"Brainwashed is a documentary for any woman in film who ever wanted, just even for a moment, to throw a grenade at the canon: Nina Menkes has the ammunition." Screen International

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