Still from The Rape of
the Sabine Women
AUSTRALIAN
Premiere
Eve Sussman & The Rufus Corporation
The Rape of the Sabine Women
WITH AN Original Score by Jonathan Bepler
Melbourne Festival presents the sumptuous, dark and
gripping film, The Rape of the Sabine Women
Developed through improvisation, The Rape of the Sabine Women is a
reinterpretation of the Roman myth, updated and set in the idealistic 1960s.
Filmed with a cast of hundreds and shot on location in Athens, Hydra and
Berlin, this improvised dramatisation pits mid-20th century ideals against the
eternal themes of power, longing and desire.
Born in London in 1961 and currently based in Brooklyn, New York,
Eve Sussman is a self-described ‘sculptor who shoots video’. Her work
has evolved from installations using film-like materials (mirrors/water/
projections) to single and multiple channel video installations. Her ideas
originate from a fascination with simple gestures and casual expressions
which she observes, captures and stages in videos, films, installations
and photographs. Sussman founded The Rufus Corporation in 2003.
Warning: Partial Nudity
The work drips with 1960s references from the cinema of Michelangelo
Antonioni, Federico Fellini and Pier Paolo Pasolini. There are shades too
of Robert Wilson, Cindy Sherman, Julian Schnabel as well as filmmakersculptor Matthew Barney. Combined with Jonathan Bepler’s amazing
score, it becomes an intoxicating, heady weaving of sound and image.
“ … a lush, strange spectacle: video art cum
film that basks in the cinematic glow of its
own complexity, adding sumptuous, almost
frilly, layer on layer of art-historical, popular
and filmic references.” Frieze
Based loosely on the ancient myth that follows Romulus’ founding of Rome
and inspired by Jacques-Louis David’s 1799 painting, Intervention of the
Sabine