Mystery disappearance of Juanita Nielsen in 1975 is the subject of Zanny Begg’s Sydney Festival film

The unsolved murder of Juanita Nielsen should be the subject of a Royal Commission, according to an artist whose new film about the Mark Foy’s heiress will be screened at the Sydney Festival.

Artist Zanny Begg with her film, The Beehive, at UNSW Galleries, Paddington. The Beehive was inspired by the unsolved murder of heiress Juanita Nielsen. Picture: Tracey Nearmy

THE unsolved murder of Juanita Nielsen should be the subject of a Royal Commission, according to an artist whose new film about the Mark Foy’s heiress will be screened at the Sydney Festival.

Zanny Begg says Sydney will carry a lasting taint of shame until Nielsen’s murder is solved.

“I think it’s a chill in the heart of Sydney,” Begg says. Nielsen was 38 years old when she was last seen alive on July 4, 1975, at Kings Cross.

Begg spent a year researching her film, titled The Beehive, speaking to everyone from Nielsen’s former boyfriend to the police officer managing the cold case.

She convinced people who knew Nielsen to be characters in the film.

Begg also filmed inside Nielsen’s former home in Kings Cross — the suburb she was fighting to save from development when she went missing.

Kings Cross resident Philippa Bateman produced The Beehive.

Begg’s treatment of the Nielsen story is “fresh and contemporary”, Bateman says.

The Beehive is a “nonlinear experimental documentary assembled from a reservoir of scripted fictions, documentary interviews and choreographed sequences”.

Footage is randomly selected for each screening. As a result, the film has 1344 possible permutations.

Various people play the role of Nielsen, including acclaimed actor Pamela Rabe. A public program accompanying the film will include a walking tour of East Sydney and Kings Cross with sex worker rights activist Julie Bates.

ELIZABETH FORTESCUE

Zanny Begg: The Beehive, UNSW Galleries, corner Oxford St and Greens Rd, Paddington, January 5 until February 23, 2019, free, artdesign.unsw.edu.au/unsw-galleries