SHORT NEWS

THE GREAT MUSEUM honored with Caligari Film Award

 

Acclaimed by press and audience after its world premiere at the Berlinale Forum, Johannes Holzhausen’s multilayered portray of the Vienna Kunsthistorisches Museum, THE GRAT MUSEUM, was awarded the Caligary Film Award – a distinction conferred on a stylistically and thematically innovative film screened at the Berlinale Forum.

 

The prize sponsored by the Bundesverband kommunale Filmarbeit and the magazine film-dienst includes prize money of 4,000 euros divided in equal shares between the director Johannes Holzhausen and the German distributor Real Fiction.

The jury statement :
Followed by beautifully gliding camera, a man on a scooter pushes himself through the endless corridors of Vienna's Museum of Art History – and comes to a stop at a copy machine. A more visually sumptuous presentation of the balancing act between culture and bureaucracy is hardly possible. The film is full of such ironically tinged references, as well as endearingly delineated protagonists who dedicate their blood, sweat and tears to the conservation of art objects. The director succeeds at taking an informative, humorous and intelligent look behind the curtains of a major museum, a museum that must assert itself against international competition.

The jury members:
Rolf  Rüdiger Hamacher (Journalist, FILMDIENST)
Claudia Cornelius (PR and curator, Cinémathèque Leipzig)
Marit Vahjen (Chairwoman of the International Film Festival Braunschweig)


THE GREAT MUSEUM
directed by Johannes Holzhausen (Navigator Film (A))
International sales: Wide House

 

This documentary portrays one of the most important museums in the world, Vienn’a Museum of Art History. An extensive look behind the scenes at this fascinating institutions employs a number of charismatic protagonists ant the varied routine there to show us the museums special world.

 

The Caligari Prize went to Austrian productions in
2007 Kurz davor ist es passiert by Anja Salomonowitz
1996 Charms Zwischenfälle by Michael Kreihsl