Juanita Nielsen Now – REVIEW
Image: Still image from Juanita Nielsen Now.
By MARTIN FABYINI
Bees and beehives are the major tropes of Zanny Begg’s film that dusts off the unsolved disappearance of heiress and activist Juanita Nielsen in 1975. Beehives worn by the actors who play her, albeit with dialogues their own; bees that beekeeper actor Pamela Rabe tend that correlates their busy hives with the pulsating Kings Cross population; and backdrops and production design swarming with them. And then there are there are the actor/dancers performing interpretative dance dressed as bees.
It’s an interesting artistic choice, a longer version of The Beehive, an experimental video installation, with 1334 possible variations, that explores the implications of her murder. The film quite rightly names the murderers as thugs Eddie Trigg and Jim Anderson, on the orders of the notorious sex trafficker and drug dealer, Abe Saffron and the property developer who wanted her dead, the repulsive Frank Theeman.
The installation The Beehive won the inaugural ACMI and Artbank commission in 2018. It had its Sydney premiere as part of the 2019 Sydney Festival at UNSW Galleries and will be part of an ACMI tour of Australian video art 2022-2023.
While it doesn’t break new ground in this sordid saga, the film is a fascinating idea giving Juanita a canvas for her style, her relentless activism and her naivety, as played out by actors in stripey tops and beehive hairdos. There are also some interviews with people from Juanita’s brief time in the Cross. It’s an intriguing artistic piece that creates Juanita as an icon in life and death.
