The Projector | From Hollywood to China, how will the coronavirus crisis manifest in future films?

With the fate of yet-to-be released movies like Mulan uncertain, filmmakers look ahead to as yet unmade productions

Pandemic-themed movies, be they comedy capers, action and adventure, or patriotic salutes to unsung heroes, seem inevitable

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Crystal Liu Yifei in a still from Mulan, which is scheduled to be released in July. Photo: Walt Disney Studios

Clarence Tsui

Published: 2:30pm, 19 May 2020Updated: 3:24pm, 19 May 2020

The coronavirus pandemic may have begun to ease in this part of the world but the fate of finished and yet-to-be released films remains uncertain. How will Christopher Nolan’s Tenet and Disney’s new take on Mulan perform at the box office if – and that’s a very big “if” – they stick to their July release dates? What about the Chinese blockbusters that were scheduled to make a killing during the usually lucrative Lunar New Year holiday but didn’t open?

These commercial concerns are short term though, and some filmmakers are already reflecting on how the Covid-19 crisis will manifest in films to be made in the next year or three. Greece’s fast-thinking Thessaloniki International Film Festival organisers, for instance, promptly commissioned a series of shorts from filmmakers living and working under lockdown.

The atomisation of human existence will also shape the way Cao Baoping runs the training camp at the FIRST International Film Festival, in Xining, Qinghai province, in July. In a letter, the Chinese director outlined how his theme, “Isolated Islands”, reflects on how the lockdown might have heightened people’s sensitivity towards issues or ideas that they would have otherwise overlooked.

Given the festival’s renown for daring young filmmakers delivering independent-minded fare – among the camp’s past participants is Hu Bo, the late director-screenwriter of the furiously fatalistic but visually gripping An Elephant Sitting Still (2018) – Cao is unequivocally calling on artists (or people in general) to use these months to junk their preconceptions of life and challenge conventions.

But solidarity with others remains crucial in the act of creating art: the painful consequences of all this seclusion should perhaps lay to rest all the myths about isolated genius conjuring ideas out of the ether.

At the other end of the cinematic spectrum, mainstream producers are drawing inspiration from the pandemic from a very different perspective. While Cao thrives on introspection and melancholia, veteran American producer Jane Rosenthal’s main takeaway from quarantine is her new-found bond with the eraser she uses to rub out various scuff marks.

The Projector | From Hollywood to China, how will the coronavirus crisis manifest in future films?

With the fate of yet-to-be released movies like Mulan uncertain, filmmakers look ahead to as yet unmade productions Pandemic-themed movies, be they comedy capers, action and adventure, or patriotic salutes to unsung heroes, seem inevitable

With the fate of yet-to-be released movies like Mulan uncertain, filmmakers look ahead to as yet unmade productions

Pandemic-themed movies, be they comedy capers, action and adventure, or patriotic salutes to unsung heroes, seem inevitable