- Austria
MUSEUM HOURS
Synopsis
Johann (Bobby Sommer) is a guard at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. He spends his days watching the paintings and the visitors. Anne (Mary Margaret O’Hara), a middle-aged Canadian, has been called to Vienna because a cousin is in a coma; she knows no one in the city and drifts through her days. The two strike up a conversation in the museum, and Johann becomes her guide through a Vienna beyond the postcards. “Museum Hours” by Jem Cohen, Austria/USA, 2012.
Half feature film, half essay: Cohen turns the paintings, above all the museum’s Bruegel collection, into conversation partners, cutting between the galleries and the streets, markets and taverns of the city. A film about friendship and about how art changes the way we see. It premiered in Locarno in August 2012. “Museum Hours” was shown at Around the World in 14 Films in Berlin in 2013.
Festival
Shown at the 2013 edition of Around the World in 14 Films.
