Medea, Opera & Film

How to translate theatre to film (or vice versa)? What parallels can be seen between Pier Paolo Pasolini's Medea and the 'theatrical' films of Albert Serra? In Albert Serra – Liberté, Eye is dedicating an exhibition Serra, whose work also interweaves with other disciplines: he also made a film with the title Liberté (2019) and a play for the Volksbühne theatre in Berlin (2018).

Sjaron Minailo (Opera Forward Festival) will give an introduction to the film and talk about his favourite opera, Medea. Minailo is an opera director and founder of Studio Minailo.

Medea

Medea is Pasolini's brilliant adaptation of the Greek myth, with opera star Maria Callas playing Medea – her only film role. Sorceress Medea is seduced by the adventurer Jason – a deep dive into the world of the Ancient Greeks, for whom the magical and the worldly were one.

In Medea, Pasolini saw an allegorical character portraying both the triumph of the rational over the irrational and of colonisation of the ancient world by an expansionist West. Pasolini drew his inspiration for his second adaptation of a Greek myth not from the well-known theatre productions of Medea, but from anthropological reports on the history of religion.

Chosen by Albert Serra

Medea is one of the films Catalan artist-filmmaker Albert Serra has chosen for the film programme (cinema) to accompany the exhibition dedicated to him in Eye. Pasolini’s film version of the Medea myth in raw, documentary-style images, along with his preference for extravagant costumes and locations, show similarities to Serra’s own work.