© 2024 | 52 min
Script: Sarah Rathgeb, Caroline Wloka
Director: Sarah Rathgeb
Camera: Gerfried Guggi, Jonathan Hug
Editing: Claudia Linzer
Music: Hannes Gill
Producers: Esther van Messel, Hansjürgen Schmölzer
Funded by:
A co-production of First Hand Films and BSX Schmölzer GmbH.
Women in the art business? Yes, perhaps as a muse: It wasn’t so long ago that the art business was completely dominated by men. A tough, million-dollar industry revolving around power, politics, connections and sales. This film portrays five women who have fought their way into their positions within it. As a curator, gallerist, patron or museum director. With great self-confidence, humour and tenacity, the view of the ugly and the beautiful is now female as well.
With humour, a critical approach and a sensitive touch, the film offers the audience an insight into the microcosm of the art business, while at the same time revealing the macrocosm of feminist values. It is precisely here that many women now hold key positions. Austria and Switzerland are places where substantial capital is available for art. We use this as a framework for a unique and vibrant insight.
The film tells how female power manifests itself in this “industry.” Whether equipped with large budgets for art acquisitions while navigating corporate and compliance constraints, within publicly administered museums, as independent entrepreneurs, or as grande dames of patronage: they all move between self-invention and positioning, success and flexibility – and they do so with a healthy dose of punk rock and imagination.
We accompany them as they prepare exhibitions, at art fairs and in auction houses, during negotiations and vernissages, in meetings and at celebrations — always on the move, chasing the next big thing. With humour, a touch of absurdity and self-irony, we observe an industry that is visually striking, emotionally charged and economically compelling.
CONQUERING THE ART BUSINESS analyses, informs and entertains through a quintet of portraits. In doing so,it contributes to seeing women and power in a new, colourful light.