Synopsis

Vienna, winter. Johann, a guard at the grand Kunsthistorisches Art Museum encounters Anne, a foreign visitor called to Austria because of a medical emergency. Never having been to Austria and with little money, she wanders the city in limbo, taking the museum as her refuge. Johann, initially wary, offers help, and they’re drawn into each other’s worlds. Their meetings spark an unexpected series of explorations – of their own lives and the life of the city, and of the way artworks can reflect and shape daily experience. The museum is seen in the film not as an archaic institution housing historical artifacts, but as an enigmatic crossroads in which, through the artworks, a discussion takes place across time with vital implications in the contemporary world. While the «conversations» embodied in the museum’s collection revolve around nothing less than the matters that most concern us all: death, sex, history, theology, materialism, and so on; it’s through the regular lives of the guard and displaced visitor that these heady subjects are brought entirely down to earth and made manifest.

Near the film’s end, Johann and Anne are out exploring on the fringe of the city when her ill friend’s condition suddenly reaches a crisis point.

For some, the film will primarily be an engaging study of two adults whose relationship defies cinematic stereotypes; for others it will be a story-engendered portrait of the city of Vienna; for others, it will mostly serve as a meditation on the crossings between life and art and the museum as intermediary … All of these interpretations are valid and encouraged.

Cohen’s feature-length films include MUSEUM HOURS (Locarno premiere, theatrical opening in 125 U.S. cities, Cinema Eye Award), COUNTING, CHAIN, and BENJAMIN SMOKE – all Berlinale premieres, INSTRUMENT (Rotterdam premiere), and WORLD WITHOUT END (Sundance). Shorts include LOST BOOK FOUND, LITTLE FLAGS, and ANNE TURITT – WORKING.

Over 30 of his films are in the permanent collection of New York’s Museum of Modern Art, with others held by The Whitney Museum, Jewish Museum, and D.C.’s Natl. Gallery of Art. They have been broadcast by ZDF/Arte, PBS, and the Sundance Channel. He has had retrospectives at Harvard Film Archive, London’s Whitechapel Gallery, Indielisboa, BAFICI, Oberhausen, Gijon, and Punto de Vista Film Festivals.

His multi-media show with live music, WE HAVE AN ANCHOR, was a main stage production in the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave series, and London’s Barbican. His show of projections with live soundtracks, GRAVITY HILL SOUND+IMAGE, was presented in Istanbul, Porto, NYC, Nantes, and Knoxville, TN. Jem’s work has been supported by organizations including Sundance Art of Nonfiction, the Guggenheim, Alpert, and Creative Capital Foundations, and New York Foundation for the Arts. Awards include the Independent Spirit Award and San Francisco Film Society’s Persistence of Vision Award. Cohen has had residencies at Macdowell and Yaddo.