Lucidno       FILM U VRIJEME PANDEMIJE KORONAVIRUSA / FILM AT THE TIME OF CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC

JEAN-MICHEL FRODON, film critic and professor, France

On a personnal level, it has cancelled or postponed numerous projects or even already existing work - the release of the book about Kiarostami I co-wrote with Agnes Devictor, the  large program dedicated to "The Forgotten Filmmakers of the French New Wave" I curated for MoMA in New York and Harvard Film Archive, teachings and lectures that were planned in Saint Andrews, in Shanghai as well as in Rio and Sao Paulo. And of course, it has prevented me from attending several film festivals, including the most important, Cannes. It also deeply modified my teaching with the Sciences Po students. But it gave me time to work on my next book, and to work on a film based installation for next Taipei Biennale I co-curate with Rasha Salti. And since I managed to keep writing, also pieces for online media, and watch a lot of movies I would say I did not lose too much, expecting that most of the postponed events will be re-scheduled.  

It is really hard to anticipate at the moment. The unbalanced relation between theatres and streaming platforms is becoming much worth, in favor of the later. To me, the strategic issue is to keep the collective screening on a big screen as the primary destination to film works, wherever they will be seen afterward. Theaters and cinemas wont’ desappear, but there is a huge risk if it becomes an eyebrow niche practice, more or less like opera. Film festivals will have to play an even more important role, but at the same time they will have (and must have) to deal with environemental issues, that are to a certain extent antagonist to the way they work. And I am affraid that, in the coming times, it will be difficult to make the voices in favour of public support for arts and culture heard, among so many other and very real crises. Nevertheless, I believe cinema would be a major ressource to invent the "world of after", to change our ways of thinking and of feeling and open roads to different approaches of our reality. 

I'm affraid of deeper gaps between the dominant industry and the 'rest of it", which is both the independant cinemas and the situations in less powerful or wealthy areas. We have a big risk of more massification and moulding.

Will there anything positive (not to Coronavirus) come out of this?  - It's hard to foresee it at the moment (mid-April 2020).

JONATHAN ROSENBAUM, writer, U.S.A.

I'm troubled as well as delighted by the fact that the pandemic has been good for my web site, the center of my creative activities, insofar as more people currently visit this site every day. But what does it mean to say that anything that's bad for humanity can be good for something else? Surely, this must be the ultimate logic of capitalism - the same logic as saying that Donald Trump is "good" for "television" (meaning, I suppose, the few  billionaires who control television), but "bad" for "America" (meaning far more than a few of the people living in the U.S.)

All this means that the Coronavirus pandemic is forcing to the surface contradictions, inequalities, and injustices that have been around for some time but were much easier to ignore or rationalize when the state of things was simply "business as usual". 

I'm not a prophet, and one of the few other positive aspects of the pandemic is to expose the outright and often self-serving foolishness of all of those who try to base their lives on such prophecies. 

ALIN TASCIYAN, film critic, festival programmer, Deputy Secretary of Fipresci, Turkey

I am a film critic and a festival programmer. I have a television program in which I introduce and analyze films with a colleague of mine. The state owned culture and art channel we work for closed the studios and began to broadcast the reruns of the programs when all the stocks were used... We will begin making the programs as of May, hopefully. As we are contractors, we don't get paid if we don't make the programs. I am the head programmer of the International Filmmor of Women's Film Festival on Wheels. Our 18th edition was supposed to take place 16-21 March in Istanbul and then travel to seven cities in Turkey, but we had to postpone it... We were planning to organize the festival in June, but seeing that it won't be possible, we are now working on an online version. The state has banned or limited all social gatherings and activities until further notice.

All the culture and art industries are irreversibly damaged, the consequences will be devastating especially on smaller countries and independent artists. If another wave of pandemic arrives in autumn or winter, the production in all the disciplines will be limited to available tools and media. The pandemic triggered a chain reaction. The festivals are cancelled or postponed, it's a disaster for arthouse films and freelancers of the film industry, film journalists, press agents, etc. They are deprived of their income... The new releases are postponed, but it is not likely that the audiences will return to theaters in masses in short term. People will be afraid to socialize in confined places for at least another year. Some of the exhibitors - multiplexes and arthouses alike- will go bankrupt. As masses are used to streaming illegal free content on the Internet, the income from legal digital platforms will not be enough to reinstate the film industry to its condition before the pandemic. In the best scenario, 2020 is a lost year. In the worst scenario so is 2021, depending on the economic crisis predicted to follow the pandemic. 

On a global basis, the film industry will get smaller. Countries with strong economies can support their citizens including those who work in the film industry but how many productions can they support? Hollywood studios will be more dominant than ever as they will be the first ones to continue to function... We can expect more CGI animations if the pandemic continues! Perhaps the biggest impact will be the decline in the diversity of productions. Economically disadvantaged groups will have difficulty in financing and marketing their productions. The only possible positive outcome of this situation may be on the creativity. I think of Jafar Panahi's amazing films "This is not a film" (2011) and "Closed Curtain" (2013) which he made in confinement. Hopefully, filmmakers can come up with brilliant ideas like these ones or with imaginative experimental films... I also hope maybe in the summer we can benefit from open air and drive in cinemas, projections on walls, etc. After all, necessity is the mother of invention! Another possible positive income can be the education of the audiences. Many people are reading books and watching films and series more than ever, many people are taking on line film reading courses and various seminars. Maybe this is an opportunity to spread film culture!