Covid Diaries at NYC Independent Film Festival

Scene from Masked NYC

Scene from 'Window'

Scene from 'Homesick'

What began as a way to cope with quarantine in a small room, grew into a multiple outdoor project.”

— AJ Stetson

NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK, UNITED STATES, May 28, 2022 /EINPresswire.com/ -- We almost forget it, but it wasn't that long ago that the covid pandemic flattened the entire society. Keeping distance, no physical contact, working from home or sometimes not working at all. Many industries, not the least in the cultural sector, came to a complete standstill.

The NYC Independent Film Festival still has a category of Covid Diaries to remember that. Films - documentary and drama - about the pandemic and how we got through it. Below are some highlights from it.

In MASKED NYC photographer AJ Stetson shows the portraits of more than one thousand New Yorkers wearing masks, to share their radiance, resilience, and empathy during this challenging time. It's more a work of art than a straightforward documentary, but beautiful to see. Stetson: "What began as a way to cope with having been in solitary quarantine in a small room for nearly a month, grew into a nonprofit project and multiple outdoor, COVID-safe exhibitions throughout NYC and online." Very good use of the music to drive the pace.

STUTTGART SUB ROSA is also an art film that deals with covid. It is a picture of a city locked at home. A collage of voices speaks of an anxiety which is collective in its mechanism but personal in experience. Within others, Stuttgart Sub Rosa borrows the voice from Ottomar Dominick’s “Jonas”, which takes place in the cold post-war Stuttgart of 1957, and re-inserts it in the current pandemic situation. It is amazing how much of the voiceover in this film and the sentiments expressed could be related to one's own experience and thoughts about how the world has changed and how quickly things changed.

ANECDOTES is a personal account of the lock down by French director Amélie Raoul. A powerful and emotionally charging story-telling via beautiful cinematography, elegant editing and engaging audio. A wonderful short film that delivers the hopelessness amidst a pandemic, about relationships during covid time. Throughout the film, there is this veil of melancholy that adds that little something to the story.

WINDOW is a very funny story. A middle-aged woman begins to watch a young man in a window across the street. The drama that takes place there makes her remember her own life as a young woman, a time that was both fantastic, and which she realizes, as the man's life becomes complicated, difficult, and painful. One day she is interrupted in her thoughts, and her life takes an unexpected turn. "Window " is a 'mockumentary', shot during corona 2020-2021, when four neighbours in the same city block - the director, two producers and the main character - started working together. Original and worthwhile.

At the beginning of the pandemic, a lot people asked themselves how the world would look after the crisis? Where to start, if not from our memory, to imagine the future after this global emergency? In STORIES WE WILL BE seven authors try in their own way to imagine the world as it will be. Using video from their family archives. We see intimate family scenes such as weddings, birthday parties and holiday trips. The idea is to reinterpret what people once were in order to give a perspective of what they will become.

HOMESICK is a charming and bittersweet reverie of a birthday in the year 2020. This short film explores how this year has reshaped how we think about ourselves and how we think about others. It examines behaviour when starved of human interaction and asks, “Can cheese fill the void of loneliness and transport us to a place that feels like home?”

If you want to visit the NYC Independent Film Festival and see one of these great films, buy your tickets on the festival website.