FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE FEBRUARY 29-MARCH 6th in CHICAGO at FACETS CINEMATHEQUE


U. S. THEATRICAL PREMIERE!
ONE WEEK ONLY!
PHANTOM LOVE




A memorably surreal psychodrama, Nina Menkes' (The Bloody Child, Magdalena Viraga) Phantom Love is a striking evocation of female dreamscape in which violence and trauma are steadily percolating, just beneath the surface. The lead character is Lulu Marina Shoif: a very beautiful, but angry and isolated woman, who lives alone, and works in a casino in Koreatown, Los Angeles. Lulu's relationship with her much younger lover is charged but emotionally disconnected and Lulu's younger sister, Nitzan (Juliette Marquis, This Girl's Life), is in the midst of a psychotic breakdown, caused in part by prescription medication. Lulu feels emotionally invaded by her mother, who wants to come to town and stay with her in order to try and help the younger sister-but this feels like a further intense invasion, and Lulu refuses. Phantom Love positions an alienated woman against a harsh, inhospitable landscape-this time, within a family. Structured like Chinese boxes, with each scene opening onto another, Phantom Love is a powerful erotic-fantasy that explores a woman's sexuality through her dreams.


Directed by Nina Menkes, Produced by Kevin Ragsdale, U.S.A., 2007, 35mm, 87 mins.


Showtimes:

Fri., Feb. 29 at 7 & 9 pm
Sat.-Sun., Mar. 1-2 at 3, 5, 7 & 9 pm
Mon.-Thurs., Mar. 3-6 at 7 & 9 pm

Tickets are $9, $5 for members


FOR FURTHER INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT:
Charles Coleman, Program Director//773-281-9075 or charles@facets.org/

MORE "PHANTOM LOVE news below:

KNR Productions and Menkesfilm are happy to announce that our film, PHANTOM LOVE(2007) will be featured in the 30th Annual Creteil Women’s Film Festival in Paris, France, March 14-23, 2008; at the Women’s Int’l Fim Festival in Koln, Germany April 20-8, 2008 (where Menkes is also a Jury Member), as well as at the Prague International Film Festival March 27-April 4th, 2008, along with a RETROSPECTIVE of Nina Menkes’s films. Another retrospective is being planned at the ARSENAL Cinema in BERLIN, Germany, for later this year, as well as at the Tekfestival in Rome, Italy, May 6-11, 2008.


PHANTOM LOVE was recently featured on numerous “Top Films of 2007” lists, including Variety’s Robert Koehler, and John Gianvito in SENSES OF CINEMA. “SENSES OF CINEMA” February 2008 issue will also be publishing a lengthy interview with Menkes by David James, and a radical essay on Menkes’s work by Berenice Reynaud, entitled : NINA MENKES: The Warrior and her Jiang Hu, which discusses Menkes’s films in connection with her work on women in Chinese martial arts movies.


PHANTOM LOVE was also recently awarded "BEST ARTISTIC ACHIEVEMENT" at the Bangkok World Film Festival in Thailand. The Jury, which included German filmmaker and Bela Tarr’s DP, Fred Kelemen, Thai helmer Ithisunthorn Wichailuck and Thai critic Niwat Kongpian stated that the award was given for the film’s “outstanding black and white cinematography, compelling narrative structure and extraordinary use of sounds to create a surreal atmosphere offering access to deeper levels of reality.”

In addition, Special Programs featuring PHANTOM LOVE in conjunction with RETROSPECTIVES of Nina Menkes’s work ( A SOFT WARRIOR ‘81/THE GREAT SADNESS OF ZOHARA ‘84/MAGDALENA VIRAGA ‘86/QUEEN OF DIAMONDS ‘91/BLOODY CHILD ‘96/MASSAKER’ 05) were shown to great critical and public response at the ATHENS INT’L FILM FESTIVAL and First Art Biennial in Greece in September 2007, as well as at the VIENNALE INT’L FILM FESTIVAL in Austria, October 2007, where Menkes was hailed as “One of greatest figures of feminist New Wave cinema”.

PHANTOM LOVE premiered at Sundance 2007 to critical acclaim—please see some of the great reviews below-- and has gone on to show widely at multiple major international film fests, including LOCARNO, EDINBURGH, STOCKHOLM, WARSAW, THE VIENNALE, as well as special screenings at THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART in NYC, and the REDCAT Theater as part of the MOCA’s WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution show in Los Angeles.


PHANTOM LOVE was produced by Kevin Ragsdale, directed by Nina Menkes, and stars Marina Shoif and Juliette Marquis. DP is Chris Soos.





“Stanley Kubrick's confident statement “If it can be written or thought, it can be filmed” receives stunning confirmation in PHANTOM LOVE… Not since Bela Tarr's Werckmeister Harmonies has black-and-white looked so stunning and mesmerizing…RADICAL AND BEAUTIFUL, PURE CINEMA ONE OF THE YEAR’s BEST FILMS!”

- Robert Koehler, VARIETY


"POTENT AND LUMINOUS! A seductively powerful vision...Menkes is one of the most provocative artists in film today!"

- Kevin Thomas, LOS ANGELES TIMES


“PHANTOM LOVE, the most recent 35mm feature by Nina Menkes, one of Los Angeles's leading independent film artists, makes its New York premiere at MoMA… Her richly nuanced films are distinguished by luminous, surreal, and often disturbing imagery, and accompanied by soundtracks that are carefully modulated to suggest the simultaneity of the psychological and outside worlds.”

- Laurence Kardish, Senior Curator

Museum of Modern Art, NYC; Department of Film



“The title recalls a line from Resnais' classic, Last Year in Marienbad. The woman 'A' says, "You're like some phantom waiting for me to come." In Resnais' work, whether the protagonists find fulfilment is a decision of interpretation by the viewer, or perhaps the male protagonist. For Menkes' Lulu, it depends on herself. ….Evocative, challenging and very rewarding, PHANTOM LOVE gripped me with such intensity I probably would have jumped if a pin had fallen. Among the welter of films I am watching in the course of the Edinburgh International Film Festival, it is the images from PHANTOM LOVE that continually haunt me. PHANTOM LOVE is the sort of work that keeps cinema alive.”

- Chris Docker, Eye for Film, Scotland



“One of the undoubted highlights of this year’s fest is US filmmaker Nina Menkes’ black and white internationally roaming surreal familial drama Phantom Love…Menkes looks set to be David Lynch’s natural cinematic successor. It would be a shame to miss her coronation.”



-Paul Dale, The List, UK




"With PHANTOM LOVE, Nina Menkes adds another masterwork to her extraordinary oeuvre. Its story of a woman's trauma and healing is told with a virtuosic use of fundamental film techniques: black and white 35mm photography, exquisite framing, and resonant sound design. It is a triumph of visual intelligence and aesthetic integrity. "

- David E. James, author: The Most Typical Avant-garde: History and Geography of Minor Cinemas in Los Angeles, Professor of Cinema Studies, USC, Los Angeles


for more information please contact :
Kevin Ragsdale 310 237 8865 or Nina Menkes 310 404 6302
kevrags@mac.com
nina@ninamenkes.com
www.ninamenkes.com
www.myspace.com/phantomlovemovie