Documenting the Pandemic
Part one: Marc’s report
THIS IS THE TIME OF THE PANDEMIC. We’ve learned a lot recently: about Zoom, the best kind of safety masks, and how to create a social bubble. Many people have suffered the heartbreak of losing family and friends. Many, too, have lost their jobs and businesses and are barely hanging on to a semblance of the existence they had before the virus descended on us.
It’s well over a year since the spread of COVID-19 shut down the world. The statistics are grim: from January 2020 to March 29, 2021, over 2.8 million people have died of it around the world; as of press time, the number of reported cases is approaching 138 million. There have been over 31 million cases reported in the U.S.A. (#1 in the world), more than 12 million in Brazil (#2) and India (#3), and over one million in Canada (#23). Though vaccines have arrived, more cases and deaths are reported every day, variants are rampant, and there is fear that a virulent new strain could surface this summer.
We’ve all tried to respond to the pandemic in our own way, from front-line workers to the medical establishment through to politicians (ok, only some), journalists, and filmmakers. The challenge for documentarians to show responsibly what has been happening while COVID is raging. How have politicians from Bolsonaro to Modi to Merkel to Trump responded to the pandemic? Docs can show us. What happened in Wuhan, the epicentre of the crisis? Several important docs, like Hao Wu and Weixi Chen’s 76 Days and Nanfu Wang’s In the Same Breath, have given us quite a variety of answers. Filmmakers worldwide are giving us personal, societal, political, and philosophical responses to COVID.
Then there’s the question of how to film in an ethical manner during these times. How can the filmmaker or photographer treat his or her subjects in a responsible fashion so that they’re not threatened by the disease? How about their colleagues? What precautions can take place to ensure their safety?
Canada is one of the great lands for documentary production. It’s disconcerting for Canadians to realise that we’re number 23 in the world in reported cases and there’s no end of stories to be made about conditions here. Many pandemic docs have been shot, are being shot, or expect to shoot in the next few months. Let’s look at some Canadian responses to COVID.
Matt Gallagher’s Dispatches from a Field Hospital
Matt Gallagher is one of the first Canadian filmmakers to respond to the COVID crisis at feature length with his Dispatches from a Field Hospital. Born in Windsor, Gallagher often makes films in his hometown
