A Day in the Life of Coronavirus Britain

What happens when a world that relies on traffic and the logistics that allow it comes to a standstill? What happens when sickness and even death are taken from us?

It’s spring in the Ecuadorian Amazon and the Uyantza festival is underway with the community celebrating all that the forest has to offer. Meanwhile, news is breaking around the world that a novel virus is spreading and a state of emergency is declared across the country. As people test positive for COVID-19 in the community, some families decide to leave and head deeper into the jungle. Disconnected from school, friends, the internet, and work, one family learns to reconnect with life in the forest. The children begin to unlearn the national curriculum, and instead are taught Indigenous knowledge that mainstream schools normally pass over. As COVID-19 wreaks havoc around the planet, the family reconnect to their ancestral ways, but as news arrives that Ecuador’s lockdown will end soon, will the family choose to return?

A video essay by Mark Rappaport, which spans René Magritte and Michelangelo to Bonnie & Clyde. Let’s mask up to rob a bank! But make sure that you are home before the curfew.

Montage of news, reports, talk shows, live broadcasts, video blogs. Together, they form the basis for a polyphonic choir that intones, condenses and follows the story of the pandemic, from January 2020 to the present day, with a focus on Germany. A chronicle of devastation can be seen as well as a chronicle of discord and rebellion: against the virus, against fate, against reality.

The film also recorded the beginning of the pandemic in China through the lens of international correspondent Marcelo Espíndola, roasting in São Paulo, Santos, Manaus and Pará. As well as Dr. Roberto Eballos (Doctor and Master in Immunology), Dr. Gustavo Pasquarelli (Infectious) and 23 other health professionals.