Amazon Studios has settled a copyright dispute with the estate of the late Cuban-American artist Ana Mendieta over claims that images in Luca Guadagnino’s Suspiria borrowed heavily from her work. Guadagnino’s film is a remake of the 1979 horror classic by Dario Argento.
Amazon, which produced Suspiria, settled the claims ahead of the film’s U.S. theatrical release this weekend. Terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
The Ana Mendieta Estate filed suit in September, claiming striking similarities between the late artist’s body of work and prominent images featured in Amazon’s June trailer for Suspiria. A image of a pair of female hands bound by rope was said to mirror Mendieta’s 1973 piece Rape Scene, which featured a shot of a bloody body print on a white sheet, and also was claimed to closely resemble her 1978 work Untitled: Silueta Series, Mexico. The images were used in dream sequences in the film.
Guadagnino had said in press interviews that his imagery for the film was influenced by the radical feminist art of the 1970s, of which Mendieta’s work is a part.
Amazon has said the disputed images have been removed from the final cut of the film that will screen in theaters.
Mendieta, who created stark and often violent imagery, frequently using her own body as the subject, is considered one of the pivotal feminist artists of the ‘70s and ‘80s.
