russian ark

"2,000 Actors. 300 Years of Russian History. 33 Rooms at the Hermitage Museum. 3 Live Orchestras. 1 Single Continuous Shot."

A very ambitious film to tell the history of Russia through the 33 rooms of the Hermitage Museum in St.Petersburg (by whom the project was commissioned). It was the first feature film ever to be shot in a single take, filmed using a single 90-minute steadicam tracking shot.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Ark

...Sokurov is an unapologetic defender of the idea of the museum in its most, superficially, conservative sense. "Museums make culture stable. Museums make the chaos of art into a stable structure. Museums also remind modern artists that there was art before them so they should be modest."