Program Guide 2008 Program Guide | Page 33

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