Queen of Diamonds | |
---|---|
Directed by | Nina Menkes |
Written by | Nina Menkes |
Produced by | Nina Menkes |
Starring | |
Cinematography | Nina Menkes |
Production company | Menkesfilm |
Distributed by | Facets Multi-Media |
Release date |
|
Running time | 77 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Queen of Diamonds is a 1991 [1] American independent [2] drama film directed by Nina Menkes, starring her sister Tinka Menkes.
A portrait of a damaged, alienated woman named Firdaus, who also works as a Las Vegas blackjack dealer. [3] [4]
The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 1991. [5]
Glenn Kenny of The New York Times called the film "an urgent portrayal of the tedium of endless transaction." [6] Leslie Combemale of the Alliance of Women Film Journalists rated the film 4.5 stars out of 5 and wrote that it "offers a fascinating look at how a female filmmaker can reframe or manipulate what has, over time, become the traditional visual language of film, in the service of more femme-centric storytelling." [7]
TV Guide wrote that the Menkes' "gift for creating memorable images plays off of Tinka Menkes' restrained but powerful acting to give Queen of Diamonds an impact above and beyond its spare story line." [8] Erika Balsom Cinema Scope wrote that the film "does not quite abide by the reality principle. It hints at how things could be more, could be otherwise-and maybe already are." [9]
In 2023, the film was added to the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress after being deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". [10]
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is a 1969 American Western buddy film directed by George Roy Hill and written by William Goldman. Based loosely on fact, the film tells the story of Wild West outlaws Robert LeRoy Parker, known as Butch Cassidy, and his partner Harry Longabaugh, the "Sundance Kid", who are on the run from a crack US posse after a string of train robberies. The pair and Sundance's lover, Etta Place, flee to Bolivia to escape the posse.
Julie Ethel Dash is an American filmmaker, music video and commercial director, author, and website producer. Dash received her MFA in 1985 at the UCLA Film School and is one of the graduates and filmmakers known as the L.A. Rebellion. The L.A. Rebellion refers to the first African and African-American students who studied film at UCLA. Through their collective efforts, they sought to put an end to the prejudices of Hollywood by creating experimental and unconventional films. The main goal of these films was to create original Black stories and bring them to the main screens. After Dash had written and directed several shorts, her 1991 feature Daughters of the Dust became the first full-length film directed by an African-American woman to obtain general theatrical release in the United States. In 2004, Daughters of the Dust was named to the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress. Stemming from the film's success, Dash also released novels of the same title in 1992 and 1999. This film even inspired Beyoncé, arguably the music industry's most influential artist, with her 2016 album titled Lemonade.
Beau Travail is a 1999 French film directed by Claire Denis that is loosely based on Herman Melville's 1888 novella Billy Budd. The story is set in Djibouti, where the protagonists are soldiers in the French Foreign Legion. Parts of the soundtrack of the movie are from Benjamin Britten's 1951 opera based on the novella.
The Case for Christ is a 2017 American Christian drama film directed by Jon Gunn and written by Brian Bird, based on a true story and inspired by the 1998 book of the same name by Lee Strobel. The film stars Mike Vogel, Erika Christensen, Faye Dunaway and Robert Forster, and follows an atheist journalist who looks to disprove his wife's Christian faith. The film was released on April 7, 2017, by Pure Flix Entertainment. It received mixed reviews from critics and grossed $17.6 million against a cheap $3 million budget.
Maitland McDonagh is an American film critic, writer-editor and podcaster. She is the author of Broken Mirrors/Broken Minds: The Dark Dreams of Dario Argento (1991) and other books and articles on horror and exploitation films, as well as about erotic fiction and erotic cinema. In 2022, McDonagh was inducted into the Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Awards' Monster Kid Hall of Fame. She is the founder of the small press 120 Days Books, which became an imprint of Riverdale Avenue Books.
Maria Giese is an American feature film director and screenwriter. A member of the Directors Guild of America, and an activist for parity for women directors in Hollywood, she writes and lectures about the under-representation of women filmmakers in the United States.
Glenn Kenny is an American film critic and journalist. He writes for The New York Times and RogerEbert.com.
Alan Jacobs is an American independent film director, screenwriter and producer, best known for his films Nina Takes a Lover (1994) and Down for Life (2009).
Nina Menkes is an independent filmmaker. Her films include The Great Sadness of Zohara (1983), Magdalena Viraga (1986), Queen of Diamonds (1991), The Bloody Child (1996), "Massacre (Massaker)" (2005), Phantom Love (2007), Dissolution (2010), and Brainwashed: Sex-Camera-Power (2022). Dissolution (2010) was filmed in black and white and is set in Israel. Nina Menkes' sister Tinka appears as an actress in many of them. Menkes teaches at the California Institute of the Arts in Santa Clarita, California. She has donated copies of several of her works to the Academy Film Archive.
Marsha Kinder is an American film scholar and Professor of Critical Studies at the University of Southern California.
All I Wanna Do is a 1998 American comedy film written and directed by Sarah Kernochan. It stars Kirsten Dunst, Gaby Hoffmann, Monica Keena, Heather Matarazzo and Rachael Leigh Cook in an ensemble cast as students of the fictional Miss Godard's Preparatory School for Girls, and Lynn Redgrave as the school's headmistress. The film takes place in 1963 and focuses on several students' plotting and sabotage of a proposed merger for the school to go coed.
Democrats is a 2014 Danish documentary film directed by Camilla Nielsson about politics in Zimbabwe following the contentious 2008 election and the subsequent coalition effort to rewrite the country's constitution.
Matt Johnson is a Canadian actor and filmmaker. He first attracted accolades for his low-budget independent feature films, including The Dirties (2013), which won Best Narrative Feature at the Slamdance Film Festival, and Operation Avalanche (2016), which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. Johnson achieved widespread acclaim for his third feature film, BlackBerry (2023), which premiered in competition at the 73rd Berlin International Film Festival.
Wildlife is a 2018 American drama film directed and co-produced by Paul Dano, in his directorial debut, from a screenplay by Dano and Zoe Kazan, based on the 1990 novel of the same name by Richard Ford. It stars Carey Mulligan, Jake Gyllenhaal, Ed Oxenbould, and Bill Camp.
Hale County This Morning, This Evening is a 2018 American documentary film about the lives of black people in Hale County, Alabama. It is directed by RaMell Ross and produced by RaMell Ross, Joslyn Barnes, Su Kim, and is Ross's first nonfiction feature. The documentary is the winner of 2018 Sundance Film Festival award for U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award for Creative Vision, 2018 Gotham Independent Film Award for Best Documentary Feature and the Cinema Eye Honors Outstanding Achievement in Nonfiction Feature Filmmaking. It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. After its theatrical run, it aired on the PBS series Independent Lens and eventually won a 2020 Peabody Award.
Love, Antosha is a 2019 American documentary film directed and produced by Garret Price, focusing on the life and career of actor Anton Yelchin. The film premiered in the Doc Premieres category at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival on January 28, 2019. The film was released by Lurker Productions in New York and Los Angeles in August 2019.
Supernova is a 2020 British romantic drama film written and directed by Harry Macqueen. The film stars Colin Firth and Stanley Tucci.
The Mole Agent is a 2020 internationally co-produced documentary film directed by Maite Alberdi. It was screened at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival in the World Cinema Documentary Competition. At the 93rd Academy Awards, It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature and was selected as the Chilean entry for Best International Feature Film, making the shortlist of fifteen films.
Best Summer Ever is a 2020 American musical film directed by Michael Parks Randa and Lauren Smitelli and featuring Maggie Gyllenhaal, Peter Sarsgaard and Benjamin Bratt. Gyllenhaal and Sarsgaard, along with Ted Danson, Mary Steenburgen, Jamie Lee Curtis, Amy Brenneman, and Dominique Dauwe served as executive producers.
Brainwashed is a 2022 American documentary film, directed by Nina Menkes. The writer-director "developed her 2017 essay and PowerPoint presentation into a film, examining the biased ways in which women are represented onscreen versus men." Using clips from hundreds of movies, Menkes explores the sexual politics of cinematic shot design; she also includes interviews with women and nonbinary artists, film theorists, and scholars, who discuss "the exploitative effects of the male gaze."