About

Eve Sussman and the Rufus Corporation's celebrated cinematic work The Rape of the Sabine Women, will be presented by ReelDance and the Australian Cinémathèque.

This video-musical is a reinterpretation of the classical Roman myth about the founding of Rome in which Romulus and his cohorts abduct women to be their wives from the neighbouring Sabine families. Inspired by Jacques-Louis David's 1799 painting The Intervention of the Sabine Women, the film re-imagines the myth and transposes the setting to the 1960s. It draws from the original tale while juxtaposing mid-twentieth century ideals with the eternal themes of power, longing, and desire. Conceived in an operatic five act structure and choreographed by Claudia de Serpa Soares, the film travels from Berlin's Pergamon Museum and Tempelhof Airport, Athens' Agora meat market, a 1960s dream house on the Aegean coast, and finally Athens' Herodion Theatre.