The Guardian Checks Out Simon Armitage's Collaborative Film-in-Progress Documenting the Pandemic

At The Guardian, Vanessa Thorpe writes about UK Poet Laureate Simon Armitage and British filmmaker Brian Hill's latest project, which documents the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic and Brexit on film. In Thorpe's words, it's "about what many believe has been the most difficult year in recent British history." More: 

With the working title Where Did The World Go? their film, which is still in production, examines life and loss in lockdown and binds the whole narrative with a new, overarching poem from Armitage.

“It has become a little bit of a ‘shepherd’s calendar’, marking the passing seasons,” said Armitage. “We have gone through phases of lockdown.

“At first, people associated it with the weather and being outside, so although there were restrictions, there were also compensations. I probably started to feel it most keenly recently, as it got darker and colder and the days got shorter.”

Among those to feature in the film are a Welsh woman who talks of her bereavement following the loss of her elderly mother, a care home resident. The camera also focuses on the experiences of a Nigerian asylum seeker and on the proprietor of a 200-year-old family-owned shoe shop business in Devon that has closed down.

“He feels devastated that it ended on his watch,” recalls Hill. “We wanted to show the range of impact on people. We also wanted to get across somehow how Covid-19 has affected performers and entertainers so badly. We spent an extraordinary time with Zippo’s Circus in the end, talking to them about how they find a way to open up the big top again safely.”

Continue reading at The Guardian.