The Hidden Shift

(Exhibit at The Mattress Factory art museum in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania)

The Hidden Shift — Plot

This film noir-inspired work began as a three-act play. Here it becomes juxtaposed with a documentary style "making of" film. It is both a film and a film about the making of that film. This cinematic device is further complicated by the casting of museum staff as the film's actors. What emerges is not just a behind-the-scenes look into the creative process but an intimate portrait of daily museum life. Alongside cast rehearsals and set building, we see staff using the copy machine, greeting visitors, and cracking jokes at a morning meeting. The result is a twisting metanarrative that dissolves the boundaries between art and labor, performance and production. Through its structure and story. The Hidden Shift invites viewers to grapple with complex questions surrounding capitalism, the meaning of work, and the precarity of the so-called 'creative class.

• Release date
• November 22, 2025
• Runtime
• 30 min
• Genres
• Crime, History
• Director
• Alex Abrahams