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Session Submission Type: Film
The "direct cinema" documentary, "National Museum," explores the art and inner working of a major art institution in Kyiv, Ukraine. In the words of the film's director, Andrei Zagdansky, “today in urban environment art museums are not only the major tourist’s destinations, but also the new “sanctuaries”, where visitors can study and reflect not only on the artworks, but on the history of the nation as well”. Andrei Zagdansky and his film crew have managed to get inside such a sanctuary, the National Art Museum of Ukraine, and diligently documented the process of curating and mounting of the two quintessential exhibitions: one dedicated to the art of Ukrainian baroque and the second one to a prominent avant-garde artist, Oleksander Bogomazov. The masterpieces of Ukrainian baroque come from a monastery in Kyiv, that was demolished on the orders of the Communists apparatchiks. "Ukrainian Picasso" Oleksander Bogomazov died of TB in 1930 and thus maybe avoided the tragic fate of his fellow Ukrainian artists, who were exiled or executed for their artistic vision in the late 1930s. To quote the filmmaker again: “you can have a very good understanding of the country and its history if you duly study its art institutions”