The Stories about Art Films: 42. Museum Hours (2012), ACJ Movie Academy

 

Basic Info

Title: Museum Hours

Genre: Drama

Country: Austria, United States

Language: German, English

Running time: 106 minutes

Release date: 8 August 2012 (Locarno International Film Festival), 28 June 2013 (United States), 6 September 2013 (United Kingdom)

Staff

Director: Jem Cohen

Produced by: Jem Cohen, Paolo Calamita, Gabriele Kranzelbinder, Guy Picciotto, Patti Smith

Screenplay: Jem Cohen

Music: Mary Margaret O'Hara

Cinematography: Jem Cohen, Peter Roehsler

Edited by: Jem Cohen, Marc Vives

Cast

Mary Margaret O'Hara as Anne

Bobby Sommer as Johann

Ela Piplits as Gerda Pachner

Summary

“Museum Hours” is a 2012 Austrian-American drama film written and directed by Jem Cohen. The film is set in and around the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, Austria.

The Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Austria

Premiered at the 2012 Locarno International Film Festival, the film had its North American premiere at the 2012 Toronto International Film Festival and screened at U.S. film festivals such as South by Southwest and Maryland Film Festival. This film was distributed to the United States by The Cinema Guild.

The (Great) Tower of Babel, Pieter Bruegel the Elder,
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna (c.1563)

Plot

When a guard of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna become friends with an enigmatic visitor, the museum becomes a crossroads that sparks explorations of their lives, the city, and the ways art reflects and shapes the world.

The Hunters in the Snow, Pieter Bruegel the Elder,
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna (1565)

One winter day, Johan, a guard at the Kunsthistorisches Museum, encounters Anne, who came to Vienna for the first time because of her cousin’s medical emergency. Never having been to Austria and with little money, she wanders the city, taking the museum as her refuge. Johann, initially wary, helps her and they are drawn into each other's world. (Continue).

The Peasant Wedding, Pieter Bruegel the Elder,
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna (1567)

Movie Review

“Bonds us to a world of stillness”

“We Are All Subjects in a Painting by Pieter Bruegel”

“One of Those Movies That Help Us See Better And Think”

“Fascinating Meditation on the Relationship between Art and Life”

“A clean blend between fine arts and human emotions”

“Elegant Post-Modern Masterpiece”

“Something different”

“Like going to an art museum without leaving home”

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Remarks: The background music for YouTube video is not the soundtrack of the film, but randomly selected.

"Dedo, Modi, Modigliani", A Video for Entry of the 2021 Unified Filmmakers Festival (UFM 2021)

How are you?

 

About two months ago, I received a request from “2021 Unified Filmmakers Festival (UFM 2021)” the film festival which is scheduled to be held in Berlin, Germany, for entry and produced a short video for the festival.

The topic of the film festival is COVID19, which is currently a fearful disease worldwide, and I produced a video relating COVID19 and tuberculosis, which caused Modigliani's death.

Tuberculosis, which had been tormenting Modigliani for his life, was a horrible disease that was highly contagious and incurable at that time, and people avoided the infected, but they were generous toward alcoholics and drug users.

Modigliani, who was very self-respecting, took an overdose of alcohol and drugs to conceal the fact that he was a tuberculosis patient, eventually deteriorated the disease, resulting in tragic death.

Amedeo Modigliani

Jeanne Hébuterne

I linked COVID19 and tuberculosis because I think they are in similar situations although the times are different.

Although it was not selected for the online screening, I would like to have that meaning in the memorial of Modigliani once again and that it was my first work for the film festival.

This video is based on the contents of my Modigliani novel, "Dedo, Modi, Modigliani," which was an entry in the Amazon Book Contest.

Self-Portrait, Amedeo Modigliani (1919)

Self-portrait, Jeanne Hébuterne (1916)

Also what is meaningful in the production of this video is that I used the soundtrack of 2004 film “Modigliani” as background music by personal permission from Guy Farley, the music composer of the film, which was directed by Mick Davis and starred by Andy García as Amedeo Modigliani and Elsa Zylberstein as Jeanne Hébuterne.

Modigliani (2004)

However, the video uploaded to social media is a version of the background music removed from the original video submitted to the film festival.

Grave of Modigliani and Hébuterne, Père
Lachaise Cemetery

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The Works by Amedeo Modigliani: 88. Seated woman with baby (Motherhood) (1919)

 

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Modigliani Institute Korea (MIK) is currently introducing artworks of Amedeo Modigliani.

The 88th work to introduce for this week is “Seated woman with baby (Motherhood)” in 1919.

This work is an expressionist style portrait and an oil painting on canvas with the size of 130 x 81 cm and possessed by the Lille Métropole Museum of Modern, Contemporary and Outsider Art (LaM) in Villeneuve d'Ascq, France.

Lille Métropole Museum of Modern, Contemporary and
Outsider Art (LaM)

This work is remarkable for a number of reasons, especially for showing the last stylistic change in Modigliani's painting, a few weeks before his death. Rigid and sculptural at first glance, this work implies a return to impasto technique and is painted in rich colors, but gives an overall monochrome impression.

Another notable aspect of this work is its subject. Except for “Gypsy Woman with a Baby”, this is only work Modigliani painted on the subject of “maternity”. 

Gypsy Woman with a Baby, Amedeo
Modigliani (1919)

This work is also remarkable in terms of its dimensions, and apart from white and black, with common colors such as brown, red and gray-green, Modigliani added the colors of ultramarine for baby’s sweater, the bright green for baby’s bonnet, the pink for mother's neckline, and the light blue for mother's eyes.

In this rigorously constructed work, everything combines to create balance and serenity, but the emotion it elicits is strictly aesthetic. When looking at the figures in the work, the baby is like a doll and the mother is like a popular Madonna, and the mother and baby seem to have no tenderness and mutual interaction. 

In addition, the sculptural mother and baby can be seen as the Virgin Mary and baby Jesus in the paintings of medieval or early Renaissance eras. The vertically divided background is reminiscent of Modigliani's previous works, influenced by Cubism.

It was one of the collection of Roger Dutilleul, Modigliani's patron and art collector.

Roger Dutilleul, Amedeo Modigliani (1919)

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89. Classical Music: 4. Johann Sebastian Bach, ACJ Music Academy

 

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This week's lecture is “Johann Sebastian Bach”, the 4th topic of “Classical Music”, which is a summary of the contents of “89. Classical Music: 4. Johann Sebastian Bach” introduced on May 27th, 2017.

Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer and musician of the Baroque period, born March 31, 1685 and died July 28, 1750. He is known for instrumental music such as the Brandenburg Concertos and the Goldberg Variations, and for vocal music such as the St Matthew Passion and the Mass in B minor. Since the 19th century Bach Revival, he is now regarded as one of the greatest composers of all time.

Johann Sebastian Bach, Elias Gottlob
Haussmann (1746)

When Johann Sebastian was born as the last child of a musician living in Eisenach, there were already several composers in the Bach family. After being orphaned at the age of 10, Bach lived with his elder brother Johann Christoph for five years, after which he continued his musical framework in Lüneburg. 

Johann Ambrosius Bach, Bach's father

Returning to Thuringia in 1703, he worked as a musician for Protestant churches in Arnstadt and Mühlhausen, at courts in Weimar, where he expanded his organ repertoire, and in Köthen, where he mainly devoted to chamber music. 

The Wender organ Bach played in Arnstadt

From 1723 he worked as Thomaskantor (cantor at St. Thomas) in Leipzig and composed music for the city's principal Lutheran churches and for its university's student ensemble, Collegium Musicum. 

St. Thomas Church and School, Leipzig
(1723)

However, Bach, who tried to carry out his own ideals to the end, had frequently difficult relations with his employers, such as the officials of the city or the heads of the churches, and as a result, he seems to have gradually lost his enthusiasm for the composition of church music. He reworked and extended many of his earlier works during the last decades of his life, and died in 1750 at the age of 65 due to complications after eye surgery.

Bach's own mastery of counterpoint, harmonic and motivic organisation and his adaptation of rhythms and forms from abroad, especially from Italy and France, enriched German musical style more than the established style.

A bust of Johann Sebastian Bach, St Nicholas
Church, Leipzig

In the 18th century, Bach was appreciated for his keyboard music such as The Well-Tempered Clavier with its didactic features, but primarily valued as an organist. In the 19th century, some of Bach's major biographies were published, and by the end of that century all of his known music had been printed.

J.S. Bach memorial in front of the church
St. Thomas, Leipzig, Germany

From his early age, Bach studied the works of his period and those of prior generations, and those influences was reflected in his music. Like his contemporaries Handel, Telemann and Vivaldi, Bach composed concertos, suites, recitatives, da capo arias, and four-part choral music, but his music was harmonically more innovative than his peer composers.

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