During the March 2020 lockdown, an appeal launched on social media and traditional channels of communication requested unpublished footage – shot while at home – that described the actions and feelings of those days: how people spent their time, what they saw from their windows, the fears, thoughts and reflections that we all experienced. The director, Gabriele Salvatores, asked people to pick up their phones and use them as if they were their eyes, to allow him to travel inside their houses, into different worlds, amidst stories, emotions and images that opened up outside the windows. This collective film was made remotely, from launch to edit and finalizing, with material gathered between 24 March and 30 May. In these two months, the production received over 16,000 video contributions.
The film opens to images of pristine nature, followed by footage of animal species superimposed over those collective rites of humanity which seemed normal until a bat flying across the sky signals the precise moment of the change. Man has reorganized life inside domestic walls as best he can: smart working, distance education, home cooking and a lot of waiting. The TV shows the images of people who, in a new daily ritual, are quick to recite the statistics of the pandemic, describe the latest restrictions or the unsettling images from the hardest hit places, such as the “front line” of Bergamo with the tragic parade of military vehicles used as funeral hearses. Outside the windows, empty streets and deserted squares and in sporting fields where the echoes of the cheers from time gone by seem very distant. These domestic images contrast with the reports of those who find themselves, often unprepared, in the front line against an unknown enemy in the hospital wards. Then there is the other side of the coin, the movements of solidarity to support those who lost their employment because of the pandemic or are alone; or nature which has taken over the spaces left empty by humanity. Up to the “moment of freedom” that, still cautiously, has given a hug inestimable worth.
During the March 2020 lockdown, an appeal launched on social media and traditional channels of communication requested unpublished footage – shot while at home – that described the actions and feelings of those days: how people spent their time, what they saw from their windows, the fears, thoughts and reflections that we all experienced. The director, Gabriele Salvatores, asked people to pick up their phones and use them as if they were their eyes, to allow him to travel inside their houses, into different worlds, amidst stories, emotions and images that opened up outside the windows. This collective film was made remotely, from launch to edit and finalizing, with material gathered between 24 March and 30 May. In these two months, the production received over 16,000 video contributions.
The film opens to images of pristine nature, followed by footage of animal species superimposed over those collective rites of humanity which seemed normal until a bat flying across the sky signals the precise moment of the change. Man has reorganized life inside domestic walls as best he can: smart working, distance education, home cooking and a lot of waiting. The TV shows the images of people who, in a new daily ritual, are quick to recite the statistics of the pandemic, describe the latest restrictions or the unsettling images from the hardest hit places, such as the “front line” of Bergamo with the tragic parade of military vehicles used as funeral hearses. Outside the windows, empty streets and deserted squares and in sporting fields where the echoes of the cheers from time gone by seem very distant. These domestic images contrast with the reports of those who find themselves, often unprepared, in the front line against an unknown enemy in the hospital wards. Then there is the other side of the coin, the movements of solidarity to support those who lost their employment because of the pandemic or are alone; or nature which has taken over the spaces left empty by humanity. Up to the “moment of freedom” that, still cautiously, has given a hug inestimable worth.
An intimate story of the Italians in lockdown: from the wonderful empty Italian piazzas, to the front-line heroes in the hospital wards, to the festive windows and balconies, to the home videos.
