With The Marshall Project and the Pulitzer Center, a look at one immigrant mother’s struggle to keep her children safe and housed, with her husband detained by ICE in a facility where COVID is spreading. Also in this two-part hour, Love, Life & the Virus.
10 Letters to the Future is a documentary film that is a mid-term review in a world of intertwined crises. It is a puzzle, a kaleidoscope that enables a multi-voiced debate in society. The collectively made film was conceived in the era of the Coronavirus, when the reality of global anomalies pierced everything we took for granted. It was a time that caused many to reassess their lives in a new light. What happened to us and what kind of future do we want to be heading towards? Virus researcher, climate activist, political scientist and anti-vaccine protesters see the future challenges facing our society in a very different light. As the virus takes over the world, schoolchildren start collecting letters to be encapsulated in a wooden coffin built by students to be opened more than 50 years from now. The main characters in the documentary write their letters, addressing their loved ones or something unknown in the future.
Two gay men in Japan discuss the end of their respective relationships.
The comings and goings of the late underground filmmaker, Curt McDowell—and the people and activities that came and went along with him—are the themes that run through this existential diary of daily life. McDowell was dying from AIDS-related illnesses during the production of the diary. “An elegy for McDowell, the videowork captures Kuchar’s mournful remembrances of his long-lasting friendship with the young filmmaker. But it also has the inquisitive charm, perverse humor, and quirky candor that places Kuchar’s visual expressions in a gritty niche all their own.”
The documentary reveals the impact of the Coronavirus on one of the indigenous but affected by the disease in the country. Narrated in first person by Divino, which highlights the desperate struggle of his village, Sangradouro, east of Mato Grosso, to survive the most tragic epidemic known by the Xavante nation. Crossed with archival material and images captured during a pandemic, the film seeks to relate a traumatic past with the reality of Covid-19.
Highlighting the heroic efforts of Dorothy Oliver to keep her small town of Panola, Alabama safe from COVID-19, The Panola Project chronicles how an often-overlooked rural Black community came together in creative ways to survive.
On March 26th, 2020, seven boys locked themselves in a house for 48 hours, with only potatoes, bread, and red light for survival. Watch the chaos unfold and tension rise between the comrades as they struggle to find a cure before it's too late.
In the first few months of 2020, huge swathes of Northern Italy were hit by a new virus. The town of Bergamo and its province was to become the epicentre of this pandemic.
Filmed entirely inside the world of virtual reality (VR), this immersive and revealing documentary roots itself in several unique communities within VR Chat, a burgeoning virtual reality platform. Through observational scenes captured in real-time, in true documentary style, the film reveals the growing power and intimacy of several relationships formed in the virtual world, many of which began during the COVID-19 lockdown, while so many in the physical world were facing intense isolation.
This film was made out of the capture of a live animation performance presented in Rome in January 2005 by Pierre Hébert and the musician Bob Ostertag. It is based on live action shooting done that same afternoon on the Campo dei Fiori where the philosopher Giordano Bruno was burned by the Inquisition in 1600. A commemorative statue was erected in the 19th century, that somberly dominate the market held everyday on the piazza. The film is about the resurgence of the past in this place where normal daily activities go on imperturbably. The capture of the performance was reworked, shortened and complemented with more studio performances.
Over the course of more than fifteen years, Clémenti films a series of intimate diaries, starting from daily encounters. In La deuxième femme, we see Bulle Ogier and Viva, Nico and Tina Aumont, Philippe Garrel and Udo Kier, a performance by Béjart, a piece by Marc’O, concerts by Bob Marley and Patti Smith (not always recognisable)... It’s like a maelstrom of psychedelic images that are passed through a particle accelerator.
Česko-19
As the first city hit in the global pandemic, Wuhan, with a population of 11 million, was placed under an unprecedented lockdown. The film showcases the incredible speed and power of China’s state machinery in its fight against the virus. On the other side of the scale is the crushing bureaucracy of that same machine.
"Film shot on the 'bench' from hundreds of photos, buildings, streets, towns unusually colorful for a North Mediterranean eye. The editing was composed on a score because the shots are generally very short, up to two images, and they do not follow each other "cut" or crossed but in "racket". The progression of shots varies from faintly colored recognizable to strongly colored unrecognizable. The soundtrack is composed of Arabic music that gradually turns into free-jazz. » Mannheim Festival, 1973
Last Room
Seven Asian-Americans discuss their experiences with racism and the spike in Asian-directed hate crimes as a result of COVID-19.
A compilation of avant-garde artwork and talent of the mid to late 20th century hosted by Ryuichi Sakamoto.
The "bleared eyes of blue glass" in the title of this experimental short expand on a verbal image from Virginia Woolf's novel The Waves, considered the most experimental among the 20th-century British writer's literary works, from which the young filmmaker took inspiration for his film, borrowing passages and visions to explain his own understanding of what cinema is. A film that plays with water - precisely - and light, and yet in a very dark b&w lit up by rare flashes of colour, making a journey in the night in which the shadow of a man gradually acquires substance.
Documentary film detailing how America became the epicenter of the COVID-19 outbreak, from the dismantling of our preparedness system starting in 2016 to the “missing months” of inaction in early 2020.
Raw and intimate, this documentary captures the struggles of patients and frontline medical professionals battling the COVID-19 pandemic in Wuhan.