Amazon Studios has settled a copyright dispute with Ana Mendieta’s estate over images in Suspiria, the highly anticipated Luca Guadagnino film set to be theatrically released in New York and Los Angeles this weekend. Mendieta’s estate filed suit against the studio in federal court in Seattle last month, claiming several images in the film were too similar to her work.
Representatives of Mendieta’s estate initially sent Amazon Studios a cease-and-desist letter after noticing the striking similarities in the film’s first trailer. The studio then cut the images in question from the final version of the film, but an agent affiliated with the estate identified eight additional similarities during a screening of the entire film in September, prompting the lawsuit.
Ana Mendieta, a Cuban-American artist that passed away in 1985, is regarded as a prominent member of the radical feminist art movement of the 1970’s. During Suspiria’s press tour, Guadagnino claimed that he drew inspiration from this very genre while making the film. Terms of the settlement were not disclosed.
Mike Klain is a Sports Highlight Contributor for the Harvard Journal of Sports and Entertainment Law and a current first year student at Harvard Law School (Class of 2021).
Image: Suspiria, Eman Rahman, public domain