I wanted to find out as much as possible about how to survive in the new world. My last job finished in November and I have spent the quieter winter months resting and enjoying early pregnancy, knowing that come March the industry should boom as usual and there will be work. I once made a film set in a sort of postapocalyptic scenario [How I Live Now (2013)] and it seems people are now more drawn to watching movies that fictionalise this sort of situation. Nurses have borne some of the worst of the Covid pandemic worldwide. If they’ve just seen future earnings dry up, I don’t imagine many of them will be keen to send me (and others) money, even though it is for work I’ve already done. Desperate times bloggery. Advertising fell off a cliff during the initial lockdown but seems to be coming back – if not to levels of production in 2019, then certainly to a point where I’m marginally busy. We’re at a fork in the road. This is my first baby and the usual fears are compounded by having no income and no prospect of the benefits I’d anticipated. Finally: I’ve had ambitions of “making it” in film/TV for a long time. Luckily, we started the year with our best-ever takings, thanks to films like Little Women, 1917, Emma and Parasite. It’s the place I grew up in and in 1994 I took it over. The film begins before coronavirus became a worldwide emergency, tracking its escalation into a national lockdown and beyond. That’s £28,000 gone in an instant. And then you think, well, actually, yes. Still, thank goodness for streaming, otherwise the film industry wouldn’t have any sort of fallback. Things are being made, but for streaming. And now we can’t even go to the pub. I’ve never been in debt before, and now I have a ridiculous amount. It’s a frustrating time to be involved in a film that is designed and then sold as a theatrical proposition, territory by territory – with all of them following America. If you haven’t suffered the blues before, they’ve really gone into the mean reds, to quote Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Audiences for things like the NT Live’s Present Laughter are quite significant – we actually had a sellout the other night. Festivals are one of the principal ways LGBTIQ+ film-makers connect with a queer audience. Our creative industries are world renowned and respected and then the government tells you to retrain in tech. It’s not a queer Christmas, but hopefully it’s a small concession present. Then I got a call from some French producers about My Son, and that was an absolute gift: now we have a film for this year, and it has made a real difference. Currently in post-production on "The Witching Hour" starring MICHAEL MADSEN, … In March, when I reflected on the overnight, forced pivot to digital of BFI Flare, our LGBTQI+ film festival, we assumed the worst of it – the dreaded Covid restrictions – would be over by autumn. From an existential point of view there’s a lot to grapple with, and what’s going on outside at the moment is possibly far more interesting than what might be going on inside a writer’s head. There are days I get up and say, ‘We’re doing this!’ and we all plough forward. These last six months, a number of people in my work life have opened up about their deeper beliefs and ideals in a way that’s made me feel a part of a hopeful and positive discussion. There are never contracts. The restaurant is also holding its own. Film-makers were flying in from all over the world … would we really cancel “Queer Christmas”?’. The government said cinemas could reopen from 4 July but we weren’t in a position to do so. The uncertainty is, if anything, greater now, and that sense of jeopardy for cinemas has reached fever pitch. There are two types of people: those who just complain – for the right reasons – but perpetuate this really negative vibe. We were a pretty successful independent cinema until about a week ago. It was amazing to reinvent how you work. It allows our most engaged readers to debate the big issues, share their own experiences, discuss real-world solutions, and more. Many hundreds of people shared their stories with us; stories suggesting that the bigger picture back then – of Cannes continuing, of Chinese cinemas starting to reopen, of multiplex confidence holding up – might be optimistic. By and large, companies honour their commitments, but every now and again, one won’t, and you have to accept that as part of the cost of doing business. I run a London film fixer company that organises film locations, production, crew and kit hire for overseas clients. It was striking that Universal announced they were moving to stream new releases, having fought for years to keep that theatrical window open. Or is a new narrative beginning to emerge? It was exhausting but I just had to keep the conversations going. It’s very seasonal work – and it seemed like the season that our work is the busiest also happened to be Covid season. It’s been challenging. Many attendees call the festival “queer Christmas”. We will need some of that to get us through until … well, who knows how long? You sort of think, actually life can still go on. During the Great Depression people liked jolly musicals with dancing girls. I’m a qualified Covid supervisor for film sets now. Then there are days when we all have to drag ourselves to our feet and curse our way through. It pays for our groceries so we are not starving. Our usual audience number on a Sunday is 1,000 – last Sunday it was 178. Little did I imagine we would be delivering the London film festival in an ambitious hybrid digital/physical form all over the UK. Has A Clockwork Orange finally been rehabilitated? We are down to a skeleton staff yet we are still not breaking even. Just as things seemed to be getting back to normal, everything reversed. Not everyone was fortunate enough to be in that position, so some have gone to the wall. You can also choose to be emailed when someone replies to your comment. Our problems will come when it comes to the film getting seen. My head started spinning. Oscar-winning director Kevin Macdonald has been commissioned to create a Covid-19 documentary for ITV. We continue to enjoy support from the Filipino-American and veteran communities for our audience build, and we are talking to distributors. I don’t want to start sounding insensitive, but we have to think about repositioning ourselves if we can get up and running again. Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later? But it does all trickle down to a small, independent cinema like ours. Now I am sitting reading film scripts, thinking, how on earth will these get made? This will be a devastating blow for a sector already under stress’So far, I’m one of the lucky ones. Something like, “Is this the life we want to lead and the world we want to inhabit?”. Coronavirus is killing off the subjects of my film’For the past 18 months I’ve been working on a documentary about second world war veterans from the Philippines, racing against the clock to wrap before they all die without appropriate recognition.
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