Nina Menkes is an American independent filmmaker and a faculty member at the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts). Born in Kansas City, Missouri, she is the daughter of Viennese Jewish Holocaust survivors who fled Austria following the 1938 Anschluss and met in Jerusalem before immigrating to the United States. She completed her MFA at the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television.
Menkes’s filmography includes feature films such as “Magdalena Viraga” (1986), “Queen of Diamonds” (1991), and “The Bloody Child” (1996), which address themes of isolation, violence, and female subjectivity. In 2022, she released the documentary “Brainwashed: Sex-Camera-Power,” based on her academic presentation “Sex and Power: The Visual Language of Cinema.” The film uses clips from mainstream cinema to analyze how shot design, camera movement, and lighting contribute to the objectification of women and the reinforcement of patriarchal power structures.
Menkes cites her parents’ experiences of displacement and persecution during the Holocaust as a foundational influence on her political views, framing opposition to military occupation and state violence as an ethical necessity. She frequently speaks at academic and cultural forums criticizing Israeli policies in the West Bank and Gaza, arguing that state-sponsored displacement undermines core universal and Jewish humanistic principles.
Menkes is one of the signatories of the 2025 public statement, “Global Jewish Call on the UN and World Leaders to Sanction Israel,” which urged international institutions and governments to enforce arms embargoes, diplomatic sanctions, and legal measures against Israel over violations of international law in the Occupied Territories.