6 Months of Coronavirus – No End, but Hope in Sight

Caption: Swiss performer Sue Mathys sings “on Broadway” in Jean-Cosme Delaloye’s film “Corona Hotspot New York – Im Epizentrum der Pandemie” for Swiss TV.

We are getting to the half-year mark of the known existence of Covid-19, and while many countries struggle with growing numbers of Coronavirus cases, re-opening efforts in many other regions give us a glimpse into a new world – one more digital and more connected online, yet one with a lot of fear and uncertainty.

Friends from Germany report that their little girl is afraid to meet other kids now in the re-opened playground where she used to make a new friend almost daily before the pandemic. A teenager from Zurich tells how strange it feels to go back to school with just half the class in attendance. “It feels like the other half is maybe sick“, she writes to her uncle in New York.

For Swiss TV, Primafila Correspondent and film director Jean-Cosme Delaloye has produced a documentary about the situation in New York that expertly captures the feel of how living on the US East Coast currently is.

“April 2020 was supposed to be a highlight of my career with the world premiere of my new film HARLEY at the Tribeca film festival,” Jean-Cosme told us. “But the festival got postponed, and Swiss Television gave me a chance to be creative when the city came to a standstill. I knew the individual stories I wanted to tell were going to be part of a chorus of voices about a city I had lived in for 18 years and I could not recognize anymore,” Jean-Cosme said.

“There was a sense of loss, and a longing for what the disoriented and hollow city used to be. This is what I wanted to capture. I wanted to tell the story of a city that was staring into the void. And I was lucky to meet people like Sue Mathys, Oliver Stumm, David Nkusi, Harley Breite, Eliane Brechbühl, Fortina Reyes, Mirjana Spoljaric-Egger who were willing to share their stories with me.”

With a laugh he commented on his 10 year-old daughter’s, Joséphine, cameo appearance at the beginning of the film: “You’ll see her sewing a face mask for me that turned out to be very useful during the shoot.”
We hope you will enjoy the film, and relate to this city that is facing a long and arduous comeback. Jean-Cosme has given us permission to share the whole 50-minute documentary here:

Another way of dealing creatively with the current situation has reached us from our star photographer Hans Sautter in Indonesia, one of Primafila’s most experienced contributors from Asia.

“I am currently isolated in my home in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, about 5,700 kilometers from my other home in Tokyo, where I was supposed to return to by the end of April,” Hans explains.

“Life as a digital nomad can be strenuous but in times of COVID-19, it is truly challenging. What was true yesterday is different today. The rules change all the time. All domestic travel within Indonesia has been banned until June 1 to prevent Mudik and spreading the coronavirus across the world’s largest archipelago,” he informs us.

Mudik is an inseparable part of life in Muslim communities in predominantly Islamic Indonesia. It’s the largest annual mass exodus to hometown relatives for celebrating the end of Ramadan. At least 20 million Indonesians travel home to perform religious rituals together with extended family and to celebrate the occasion. The famous industrial photographer finds peace – and a new photographic challenge – in his garden.

“I am lucky to be quarantined in a tropical sanctuary with no thru- traffic at the end of a cul-de-sac, in a tiny house sitting on a bluff overlooking the jungle. My garden – wild, dense, and unrestrained – is soothing, a sacred place. With tropical downpours and ever-changing light, it is an endless source of photographic inspiration despite its small size of about 120 square meters. Photographed spontaneously with an iPhone 8, in black and white, the primal lushness is transformed into a different time and space,” Hans writes.
While most assignment work has been postponed or cancelled, he is finishing a photo book on Japan, to be published this autumn and developing a photo app with a partner. In the meantime, we get an exclusive preview of Hans’ “garden work” here.

We hope you enjoy our contributor’s work, and please contact us about how we can be of service to your company with our extensive network of journalists, photographers and film makers!

Viviane Egli, Managing Director, Primafila AG, Zurich Headquarters
Roman Elsener, Head of US Offices Primafila AG, New York