Lucidno FILM U VRIJEME PANDEMIJE KORONAVIRUSA / FILM AT THE TIME OF CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC
Coronavirus (or Covid-19) closed many institutions, streets, whole cities, countries including cinemas globally and put a spooky halt to film production and much of our life as we used to know it. The biggest and smallest film festivals are cancelled or re-scheduled (with Berlinale being the last one to escape the world lockdown). Film critics and journalists who regularly report on festivals are, also, affected. Freelancers, independent filmmakers and unemployed people (of all professions) are the hardest hit, and our lives became synonymous with a lockdown. Many festivals went online and an unprecedented digital global film festival has been announced - We are one: a global film festival, which will showcase, from 29th May to 7th June, free feature (fiction and documentary), shorts etc. films on YouTube, curated by some of the world’s biggest film festivals, including Cannes, Venice, Sarajevo, TIFF, NYFF, Tribeca etc. All funds raised during the festival will benefit COVID-19 relief funds https://www.youtube.com/WeAreOne
But what will this mean? Will all film festivals go online in the near future? What will happen to halted film productions? How can cinemas and festivals exist without crowds of people and audiences, will cinemas, the collective experience by definition, survive the so-called ‘social distancing’? Will independent cinema survive at all? Will online platforms triumph in their domination? Will the Coronavirus lockdown result in conceptual shifts? What will the notion of film premiere be if it’s only online and not geographically determined (national, international etc.)? Will words such as “live”, “in person” events and cinema darkness become rarely used ‘new’ words? Or will everything go back to ‘normal’? Which would not be the best option, if ’normal’ is poverty, dictatorship, totalitarianism or devastation of our planet… Sometimes, I feel as if the daily press-conferences on the COVID-19 update on numbers (statistics, numbers) of cases and deaths and new state measures were not TV news-programmes of our new reality, but episodes of a new, badly directed, TV dystopia serial, running endlessly.
While we wait for politicians, epidemiologists, and financers to make decisions and the new recession is looming globally, the only thing we know for certain is that it is impossible to plan anything, but many questions are raised. About these and other questions related to how their work was affected by this crisis, I have talked to film professionals (directors, script writers, directors of photography, film critics, festival directors etc.) from around the world since the beginning of April. Initially, I envisaged this ‘project’ as a poll on the impact of the crisis, expression of filmmakers’ thoughts, options and expectations within the national context of Montenegro. But, as there was much online communication with the whole world, my survey expanded, first, to the post-Yugoslav region, and, then it became world-wide (to match the global pandemic situation). The result is a compelling, inspiring, wide-scoped series of interviews - by no means geographically comprehensive - and a delightful testimony of human imagination and solidarity. “The planet is one” and now we all face the same or similar health, professional and financial issues, but the impact of the pandemic will be shaped by individual governments – each country has its own approach to measures and guidelines and vaccine projects vary from one country to another. Hence, the post-Yugoslav region is displayed as a separate section, since it shares its historical heritage and faces similar political, social and economic problems and harsher threats than some more developed countries, as reflected in most answers, “the big will become bigger and the small will become smaller or even disappear altogether”, “film hasn’t died yet, but when this will happen we don’t know”, “film has been on respirators in the region for a while now”, “a vaccine to salvage culture, especially film, should be invented”. In addition to the pandemic quarantine, Croatia, especially the city of Zagreb, was faced with a shocking and highly damaging earthquake on 22nd March, which, further, aggravated the already dreadful situation.
I sent out the same questions (in different languages) to 46 film professionals individually, out of which 40 replied, although I received a response even from those 6 showing willingness to communicate their thoughts, but apologizing for and explaining their delay in answering by being too busy or simply by lack of time, due to various reasons.. The initial aim of my project accounts for the highest number of interviewed Montenegrins (although many of them took the longest to respond, the cause of which may be, contrary to the clichéd laziness of Montenegrins, the overwhelming online (work and other) communication or the difficulty of many of us to focus properly and meaningfully on our tasks at these bizarre times). The high number of interviews on the regional level is facilitated by our linguistic and other commonalities. Some replied in their mother tongue, some in English and some in Serbo-Croat. Although film industry itself is not gender-justice oriented, I attempted to achieve gender-balanced interviews.. Five of the missing replies are regional and most of them are, actually (surprisingly or not?) by women, although they showed willingness to participate in the survey. One of the possible explanations, especially at the Balkans, is that women might have become extremely busy during this period: common home activities, more demanding child-care during online schooling, various daily menial tasks etc. There is no specific methodological framework for the order of the country categories, i.e. the text was updated as the answers were arriving, thus completing the country’s category. Film critics were the first to respond.
All the answers are original, idiosyncratic, inspiring, insightful, to some degree thought-provoking, some are funnier than others (suggesting that humour is crucial in fighting the feelings of dystopia, anxiety and alienation). Recurrent key words are: stability, instability, losses, re-invention, re-distribution, re-scheduling, creative, inspiration, social solidarity, planet, caring, young audiences. Some enjoy more this time of isolation, not unfamiliar to artists, especially script (or book) writers, some enjoy it less. Even when they convey similar contents, the ideas expressed range from the pessimistic ones – “this is the death of cinema art as we know it, nothing will be easy again for independent artists, cinemas will die out” etc. to the more optimistic ones: “this may be the opportunity to educate film audiences and spread the film culture… to enhance our creativity”, as people are watching more films and TV series now than ever. This might be a lesson for cultural policy makers how impoverished or even impossible life would be without culture and arts.
Pitanja/questions:
- Kako je pandemija virusa Korona pogodila tvoj stvaralački rad/fazu u filmskoj (post) produkciji?
- Koliko štetne (i dugoročne, trajne…?) će biti posljedice za lokalnu i regionalnu kinematografiju – filmsko stvaralaštvo, ali i filmske festivale, bioskope, koprodukcije, filmske centre/fondove…?
- Koliko/kako će ovaj karantinski period uticati na globalnu filmsku industriju uopšte? Hoće li se desiti bar nešto pozitivno (osim na Koronavirus) iz svega ovoga?
- How has the Coronavirus pandemic affected your creative work/project/film (in its different phases)?
- How damaging (long-lasting…) might the consequences be for film art, film festivals, cinemas, coproductions, film centres, various film events…?
- How might this quarantine period affect the global film industry, in general? Will there anything positive (not to Coronavirus) come out of this?
