The film The Angel of History (70 min) deals with the troubling presence of unsolved past events in actual and imagined realities. It takes place in various public and private arenas like the artist's studio, the arena of murder, the photographic frame, the museum, the body or the cemetery.
The Angel of History offers new perspectives for understanding the complex relations which are spun around the museal space. The movie probes beyond the standard and limited museal relationships between artist and work or viewer and work, exposing the fragile, troubled and intimate relations between the various protagonists who participate in the becoming-public of the work of art: between a daughter and her mother, between an analyst and his patient, between father and son, between photographer and photographic subject, between a ghost from the past and contemporary figures, and between hangman and victim.
The film was conceived as a "speaking catalogue" for an exhibition of the same name curated by Ariella Azoulay (shown at Herzliya Museum of Art and Mishkan Le'Omanut, Ein Harod, 2000). The works on display in the exhibition are spoken of in the film using a plurality of voices, by means of speech in the first person and in the third person, in conversations with the participating artists, and in staged scenes. The film follows the transformation of the body into a museal exhibit and the transformation of the museal exhibit into a substitute for the body by means of looking inside actual museums (The Yad Vashem Memorial, the Modern Art Museum) as well as virtual museums (the Museum of Women's Foreskins or the Museum of the Extinct Jewish Race in Prague).
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The film was shown in "New Territories", The Venice Film Festival, 2001
Written and Directed by: Ariella Azoulay, Editor: Eliav Lilty, Cameraman: Miki Kratsman, Choreography (the Square scene): Tamar Borer, Music: Eran Zur, Produced by: Herzliya Museum of Art, Executive Producer: Ilit Ferber
ארכיוני המרכז הוקמו בתמיכת קרן אוסטרובסקי וארטיס
