The Year of the Everlasting Storm (2021)

The Year of the Everlasting Storm (2021). The Year of the Everlasting Storm: Directed by Anthony Chen, David Lowery, Jafar Panahi, Laura Poitras, Dominga Sotomayor, Malik Vitthal, Apichatpong Weerasethakul. With Yay Yay Bobby Jones, Catherine Machovsky, Yu Zhang, Dongyu Zhou. Featuring seven stories from seven auteurs from around the world, the film chronicles this unprecedented moment in time, and is a true love letter to the power of cinema and its storytellers.

“u0026quot;The Year Of The Everlasting Stormu0026quot;u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eA love letter to cinema, shot across u0026#39;The USu0026#39;, Iran, Chile, China and Thailand, by seven of todayu0026#39;s most vital filmmakers. New life in the old house. A breakaway, a reunion. Surveillance and reconciliation. An unrecognizable world, in the year of the everlasting storm. Jafar Panahi, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Laura Poitras and other heavyweights of global cinema reflect on 2020 in this sweeping auteur anthology film for the age of u0026#39;COVIDu0026#39;.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eAs a result of u0026#39;The COVID-19u0026#39; pandemic, film production came to a halt in March of 2020 and filmmakers across the world were confined to their homes. The work and daily life of the film industry and film culture were destabilized. In a few short weeks, modes of socializing, working, and consuming were radically altered. Filmmaking as we knew it had reached a standstill, deemed unsafe indefinitely. The film is made under a state-imposed stay-at-home order, forbidden from writing screenplays or directing films. The films finds an innovative and audacious way to comment on the circumstances and absurdity of his confinement. Co-directing inside their apartments, the filmmakers eliminated all but the essential modes of filmmaking to connect, collaborate, and create in the face of limitation and an uncertain future. The result, u0026quot;The Year Of The Everlasting Stormu0026quot;, is a beguiling, self-reflexive statement on the enduring spirit of artists. Inspired by creativity and ingenuity in a unique circumstances, the documentary wants to challenge artists around the world to reimagine the boundaries of filmmaking and film production and embrace limitations to tell diverse, personal stories that reflect and respond to this moment of distance and isolation. The shoot is confined to the location of filmmaker quarantine. The filmmakers not shoot in public spaces. The cast and crew is limited to those in quarantine on location. Props, costumes, and production equipment is limited to those onsite. All genres and modes of filmmaking are encouraged but temporal and geographic continuity is maintained. Animation, archival and browser action are all permitted, as long as thereu0026#39;s evidence within the film that it takes place in the here and now. Production and post-production crew members work from home.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eOver the course of the summer of 2020, the ground of the pandemic began to shift underneath us, along with the scientific communityu0026#39;s guidance. Each country has itu0026#39;s own approach to the pandemic. And even within each country, nothing is static. Some of the original rules no longer make sense. Much like every individual during this pandemic, we quickly find ourselves in a position to arbitrate between which rules could be broken and which could not. In life, rules are broken for reasons both practical and poetic. In art, itu0026#39;s the same. Shot in secret during the pandemic, u0026quot;The Year Of The Everlasting Stormu0026quot; comprises seven shorts from some of the filmmaking firmamentu0026#39;s most acclaimed names. Billed as a true love letter to the storytelling power of the moving image, these collected tales are deeply personal responses to life under lockdown and, together, make up an extraordinary cinematic journal chronicling human existence during whatu0026#39;s an unheralded historical moment.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eWritten by Gregory Mann.”