Two Greek museums, the Diachronic Museum of Larissa and the Archaeological Museum of Kythera, are among the winners of the 5th edition of the Museums in Short Awards, a European contest for short videos produced for museums, which was held in Piran, Slovenia this August. Launched in 2012, the Museums in Short awards are presented to institutions, authors or producers who use videos to enhance museum communication and engage audiences. Projects may include documentaries, animations, trailers and visual installations.
The jury, comprised of museum, media and video professionals selected 12 finalists in three categories: promotional, exhibits and storytelling. In the promotional category the victory went to the Diachronic Museum from Larissa, Greece, with the film Tracing the Footsteps of Human Society. The public-vote award, bestowed on the basis of the largest number of votes in the on-line voting, went to the film I am the Lion of Kythera by the Archaeological Museum of Kythera from Greece.
"Tracing the Footsteps of Human Society", the Diachronic Museum of Larissa video, directed by Giorgos Vrantzas and set to Kai Engel's music, showcases the main characteristics of the Thessalian culture over the ages, through the exhibits of the museum as well as the impressive landscapes of the Thessaly region. The Diachronic Museum of Larissa, inaugurated in November 2015, displays outstanding archaeological and byzantine finds from the Larissa area, from the Middle Palaeolithic to the late Byzantine times, including exceptional discoveries from the Neolithic period.
"I am the Lion of Kythera" from the Archaeological Museum of Kythera, directed by Giorgios Didimiotis and set to music by Chloeo Kamberou, is an animation film that tell the narrates the history of the island through the adventures of an archaic marble statue of a lion, one of the museum's actual exhibits.
The archaeological exhibition of the Museum of Kythera offers a journey through time, starting from the 9th millennium B.C. and ending in the 3rd century A.D. with an accompanying narration that presents Kythera's cultural heritage and history within its wider historical context in the Aegean and the eastern Mediterranean. The island's identity as a gateway to the Greek archipelago, as a passage and supply station for Mediterranean travelers, as a bridge between Crete, the Peloponnese and the Cyclades, as a strategic position, pirate base and also a place of pilgrimage - all these are revealed in the variety of 665 ancient objects.
Other winners include, in the category exhibits the Van Gogh Museum from the Netherlands with the film Seeing with a Japanese Eye and for best film in the storytelling category, the MUCEM from France with the film was Rural Worlds.
49 museums from 20 European countries participated in the contest, organized by the Italian Museum of Industry and Labour (musil), the European Museum Academy (EMA) and Fondazione Brescia Musei, in collaboration with Forum of Slavic Cultures and ICOM Italia.