05/09/2006

Opera Jawa, presented in the Horizons section of the Venice Film Festival, is an Indonesian homage to Mozart through dance, music, choreography and installations. The ninth film by director Garin Nugroho, who was at Cannes last May with Serambi, was commissioned by the Viennese project New Crowned Hope to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the legendary composer’s birth.

“It is one of the five film projects presented at Venice,” said project Executive Producer Simon Field. “They will all then be presented at a very special festival in Vienna, which was created to pay homage to the great composer and is being directed by Peter Sellars. The works we chose are not on Mozart, but must bring to life the spirit of his music. Nugroho’s film is one of the first projects we commissioned. We understood each other immediately”.

Shot in just two weeks, the film is made up of approximately 60 choreographed pieces and performed by 60 artists. It is a majestic work in which intersect and co-exist legends, stories and folk traditions of the various Indonesia communities.

Opera jawa is the modern and musical rendition of the epic Indonesian poem “Ramayana”, the story of a love triangle that explodes into terrible violence, and develops to the rhythm of the “gamelan”, Indonesian percussions, through Balinese and Javanese dance.

France’s Pyramide is handling international sales.

(Translated from Italian)