05.12.23, 20:30, La Ville Louvre (1990)
Nicolas Philibert, 104', French spoken, English subtitles
For the first time, a major museum reveals its behind-the-scenes secrets to a film crew: kilometres of underground galleries, studios, storerooms containing thousands of paintings, sculptures and objects, places not open to the public... Little by little, characters appear, multiply and intersect to weave the threads of a story. Paintings are hung, rooms reorganised, guards try on their new uniforms and an antique sculpture gets a ride on a forklift through the Louvre's wings.
French documentary filmmaker Nicolas Philibert (known for the incisive Être et avoir (2002)) presents a documentary in which the mundane and the extraordinary, the prosaic and the sublime, the comic and the dreamlike come together. La Ville Louvre unravels the museum as a city within a city.
This film is introduced by art scholar Joséphine Vandekerckhove.