First Month

Filmed on New York City’s public bus system throughout March of the COVID-19 lockdown, "First Month" captures the desolation, fear, and uncertainty of a functioning but fractured urban ecosystem. In accordance with the belief that the unfamiliar is best explored through the lens of the familiar, quotidian experiences of public transportation illuminate dramatic changes in the city. The viewer is submerged in the visual, auditory, and emotive sensations of the moment in snippets of conversation intermixed with the roar of machines; anxious eyes peering out of masked faces; robotic announcements portending the terms of our new world; and the blinding neon advertisements of Times Square that seem to vainly insist upon normalcy. "First Month" is both a record of transformational events and a portrait of an uneasy city at the precipice of unknown and inescapable change.