Agalma

Naples. In the deceptive stillness of the great Bourbon edifice that houses the National Archaeological Museum, a frenetic buzz of activity breathes new life into statues, frescoes, mosaics and exhibits of various kinds. The film observes everyday occurrences in the museum, focusing on the daily lives of staff who tackle minutely delicate tasks that require time, care and constant attention. The works, which have lived and resounded for centuries, are monitored as though they were living bodies. All this happens while visitors arrive from all over the world, thronging the various exhibition halls under the seemingly impassive gaze of the works that are both actors and spectators in the great human endeavour. In all this, the museum emerges as a great productive entity, revealing its nature as a material and intellectual site of works. Agalma (from the Greek for “statue” or “image”) captures the beauty of the museum, evidenced not only in its enchanting display of classical art, but also in the intimate and otherwise invisible relationships that unfold within it: the secret and continually renewed relationship between the visitors and the wonders of Greco-Roman antiquity; the impassioned breath of those who plan the everyday life of the museum.