2020 ITSELF AND THE CANCELLATION OF MIFF
Whilst this spot is normally meant for a specific movie, this year it seemed like the perfect place to talk about the impact the coronavirus outbreak has had on my cinema viewings in 2020. Like a lot of people, I had no idea just how much this virus would change our world, and initially at the beginning of the year, it was used as a punchline for many a joke. However, the longer this went on, the realisation of just how big this was finally started to hit home, when the makers of the new James Bond film “No Time To Die” decided to delay its release. Then “A Quiet Place: Part II” followed suit, before the release schedule effectively imploded with the majority of big films going the same route. The severity of the situation was starting to show itself in earnest. In saying that, I still had no idea that back in early March when I left the cinema following a screening of Leigh Whannell's “The Invisible Man”, that that would be the last time I would be able to set foot in a cinema again for the next eight months. The following week all cinemas in Melbourne were forced to shut down to combat the Covid-19 outbreak, and did not open again until late November.
Despite the cinemas closing down, and the constant shifting of tentpole release dates, I still kept a positive attitude that this year's MIFF would still go ahead. Sports competitions started closing, concerts cancelled, and our whole way of life started to change, but I couldn't let go of the hope that MIFF would survive, even though every one and everything was telling me otherwise. This was going to be a milestone year for me at MIFF as it would've been my twenty fifth consecutive year of me attending the festival, however it was not meant to be. When the Cannes International Film Festival was finally cancelled, I knew that the writing was on the wall for my beloved MIFF too and sure enough, about a week later, confirmation came that there would be no festival in 2020. I was shattered. It is the thing that I do each year that I look forward to and anticipate like nothing else. I often say that I work all year just to earn the holiday pay to be able to take time off to experience MIFF in August. For a brief moment, it felt like my life was turned upside down. The hope I was holding on to had finally been taken away. When your biggest enjoyment in life, outside of family, is cinema and it is what you look forward to on a weekly basis, it felt like a massive kick in the guts to lose it all, and the longer this health crisis went on, the more it felt we would never get it back.
However, this was bigger than the movies. People were dying from this disease around the world at an alarming rate. Yes, I was not able to go to the cinema anymore, the majority of my most anticipated titles would not be released this year, and even movies being made for the future, had their productions shut down because of this virus. It sucked big time, but as I just said above, this was bigger than the cinema. This was people's actual lives that were being put in danger, and the realisation of the bigger picture made everything easier to handle.
My own story during this pandemic was a little reversed than most, as because I work in a supermarket, I was deemed an “essential worker” and once our state was shut down, I was one of the few who was still working regular hours and whose job actually got harder as early panic buying set in across the state. As such, I never had the fears of not having a job, or wondering where the next paycheck was coming from, or the mental strain of being stuck at home, feeling useless and trapped. However, I did have to deal with the anxiety of being out there working amongst the public who could be infected and having to worry if I was bringing home the virus with me each night where I could possible also infect my family. In the early months, during the first lockdown, we also had to work without face masks, which increased the anxiety. It wasn't until masks became mandatory (something I initially thought I would hate), that this anxiety started to subside. Those early weeks were also tough because we saw customers at their worst in their panic buying, terrified that they would miss out on some essential item like toilet paper. Tension and anger were often displayed towards us as staff members and at times, we were treated like punching bags for the rest of the community to take their frustrations out on. It was tough, but as we often said amongst ourselves, we were still so glad to just have a job during this outbreak.
Bringing it back to a cinema perspective for a bit, I found great comfort in watching old favourites in my blu ray collection and catching up on cinema from the past that I had yet to find the time for. I've always loved silent films, but I had a great month during September where I saturated myself in them. Right now I am currently going through French films from the 1930s and 1940s, discovering the works from directors like Jean Renoir, Marcel Carne, Julien Divivier and Jacques Becker, whilst diving headfirst into the “Poetic Realism” and “Popular Front” film movements........and I am loving every second of it; I am obsessed with it right now! So yeah, while it totally sucked that all of our worlds were turned upside down from this virus, cinema is also what is helping me get through it too.
As I mentioned above, I live in Melbourne and come mid-July we were hit with a second wave of Covid that saw us subjected to one of the strictest lockdowns within the world. We were not allowed to leave our house, with the exception for “essential workers” to go to work, or to pick up essential items like food or medicine, or for medical reasons. Masks were mandatory both inside or outside. Nothing in a hospitality sense was open, bar from a takeaway service, and the amount of people allowed in a supermarket or doctor's office at any time was monitored every minute of the day. The biggest thing though was that the residents of Victoria were hit, for the first time ever in our history, with an 8pm curfew. No one was allowed to leave their houses between then and 5am without strict documentation. This situation lasted twelve massive weeks and during the middle of it, felt like it would never end. It was dire. It was horrible. I only bring this up because we ended up on the other side of it, and amazingly had sixty one consecutive days with no cases or deaths from the virus, which in the middle of it all literally felt impossible and that we could never reach that mark. Back during those dark days, I was so sure that MIFF would not go ahead even in 2021, however all that has changed. Hope has returned and I am sure that I will make it back to my favourite film festival this year.
So yes, my biggest disappointment of 2020 was the year itself and the cancellation of MIFF. It really sucks to think that out of my eight most anticipated films of 2020, only three saw a release. And yes, MIFF ended up being cancelled, although it did continue via a digital variation although that was not the same. 2020 was a shocking year for cinema, but in the grand scheme of things and in the big picture, it was also cinema that helped so many of us get through this time. And for us living in Melbourne right now, we can happily say we made it. We have come through the other side, and our life and worlds are opening up again. Is the world the same as it once was? No, definitely not. It has changed a lot and will never truly go back to what it once was, but there is some normality in our lives once again. And thankfully, hope.
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