Guest: Nina Menkes

Nina Menkes inhabits a solitary position in American independent cinema. Her penetrating films captivate with their hypnotic images, which find a distinct form to portray mental states and unconscious ideas. We are very happy, following a small retrospective in 2008, to be able to welcome Menkes back to Arsenal on October 19 for the German premiere of her current film. In HITPARKUT (Dissolution, Israel 2010), a male protagonist is at the centre of the narrative for the first time in a Menkes film. A Jewish Israeli, he lives in a run-down flat in the Arabic part of Tel Aviv. He seems stuck in a cycle of aggression and lethargy. His solitary nighttime outings end in half-empty bars. He haggles at the butcher's shop and afterwards grinds a knife in time with a metronome. The murder he commits remains of secondary importance. Inspired by Dostoyevsky's "Crime and Punishment", a dark drama composed of only loosely connected scenes comes into focus in shining black and white. In collaboration with the dffb. (19.10.)