It is difficult to be surprised by a new audiovisual testimony about the ravages of Covid-19 when one year and two months have passed since the WHO declared a state of pandemic. Television reports, Internet content and the experience of each one of us have made us strictly secondary or main actors in a tragic, dramatic or stubbornly optimistic script depending on our nature. This production by DCTV Youth Media (a New York community organization that teaches young filmmakers for free) makes it possible for us to shudder once again with what is happening out there.
These are five micro-documentaries recorded by boys and girls who are hardly over 20 years old, the vast majority of whom are African-American or Latino, making a living as they can or watching their elders do it. In a certain way, this production is the opposite of the reality shown by some of the shorts of “Homemade”, the film of famous filmmakers in times of coronavirus aired last year on Netflix.
Several of them are filmed entirely on cell phones and those that are not are something like a bet between the mobile and the camera. Their durations are variable, but none exceed 20 minutes, depending on the circumstances of the situation. The first is “The Only Way to Live in Manhattan” and it is from Marcial Pilataxi, a boy employed in a service of delivery and that he lives in an apartment in a building in New York with his grandmother. In the streets he films the first days of the quarantined city and at home the tiring routine of his grandmother (and his) as the garbage and cleaning men.
Then comes “My panic at Covid”by Aracelie Colón, perhaps the most “optimistic” of the lot. Aracelie’s father works in the postal service and his weapons are his bicycle, his helmet and his mask. The girl lives with her mother at home and is somewhat complicated by her health since she was diagnosed with some conduct disorders.
“When my father had Covid”, by Camille Dianand, it lasts no more than ten minutes and is not necessary: what counts is brutal and best seen in short doses. The father performs maintenance on the New York subway and is afraid of catching it until one day what the title already explains happens.
Escape from New York
The only short film made about a non-minority family is “New York with no way out”by Shane Fleming. He lives in an apartment whose mortgage seems infinite and which belongs to the Blackstone investment group (otherwise the subject of negative and critical UN reports). Both of his parents are left unemployed in the midst of the crisis and with no other alternatives at hand, they decide to leave the city for the Midwest.
“Covid Diaries, NYC” conclude with “Family on the Front Line”, the longest of his shorts, made by Arlet Guallpa. Since five in the morning, his camera is awake to record his father, who, visibly sleepy, can barely control his body after going to bed a few hours before. This segment is spoken almost entirely in Spanish (Arlet’s parents remember at some point how they arrived illegally in the US) and reconstructs the journey of Carlos Guallpa, who drives a bus in the city and despite his care against contagion is little you can do with indolent passengers without masks.
Arlet also records the protests following the murder of George Floyd, realizing that this serie It lasted from March and April, when the pandemic was just beginning, until May, when the United States was already a boiling pot of injustice and unrest.
Fear and panic on the ship
Directed by documentary maker Hannah Olson, “The Last Cruise” He also resorts to the personal record, although this time there are footage made after the events as a contrast and corollary. What we are shown is in a certain way the anticipated and cruellest reality of the scenario that the planet would experience in the coming months: a group of 3,700 people, including passengers and crew, is left at the mercy of a quarantine on the Diamond Princess cruise ship in front of the shores of Yokohama (Japan) in February 2020.
A no lesser number of passengers recorded the days of misery (and of celebration, before the quarantine, of course) aboard the British luxury ship stranded in the Japanese seas. It all started with a tourist from Hong Kong who was briefly on the ship and who once on land tested positive in the control test.
During some moments we see images of happy tourists, immersed in gargantuan night feasts or dances everywhere, touring in Japan, Hong Kong or China, invaded by the benefits of this type of offers tourist It’s just a somewhat sadistic preamble to what we know will come. On February 1, 10 passengers delivered positive results for coronavirus and three days later the Japanese authorities decided to put the ship under quarantine.
The records show different realities and different moods, from a middle-aged American couple who never seem to lower their guard of smile and energy (almost suspiciously) to another married couple of the same nationality that is separated when the wife also falls ill. and is transferred to a local hospital.
What until a few days ago was the land of excesses and fun becomes a prison with poor care, overheated snacks and endless confinement. The worst of all is that as we have ever seen in the movies about the Titanic, here are two realities: if someone who has a bad time is because another has an even worse. The records of the passengers, who after all receive medical attention and care from the Japanese authorities, are much more benevolent than the recordings of the crew, doomed to oblivion and the most alarming contagion.
In this way and perhaps without trying, “The Last Cruise” it becomes an unexpected altarpiece of class division, with privileged tourists and second-class citizens.
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