The films that made us: BFI to archive best coronavirus videos

From Joe Wicks’s high energy PE lessons to Boris Johnson’s “mild symptoms” video tweet to recreating a daily commute in the shower, online video is playing a bigger role in the collective experience during the coronavirus lockdown than ever before, British Film Institute curators have said.

Anxious to document a unique moment of history, the BFI has announced details of a “rapid response” plan to collect in its archive the best of those videos.

It wants the public to make recommendations, whether it is a film that made them laugh or cry or simply shamed them to stop panic-buying.

Will Massa, a contemporary curator at the BFI, said it had been collecting online video for a number of years but the coronavirus crisis and lockdown had brought about a “tidal wave” of important new content.

It provides a window into the national psyche like never before, he said. “Even though we are mainly isolated in our own homes there is this sense of digital connectivity that is definitely new with regard to a feeling of nationhood.

“Ten years ago we wouldn’t have been experiencing something like this in quite the same way. We certainly wouldn’t have had an insight, in quite the same way, into the public mood.”

Choosing and collecting the videos is challenging simply because there is so much of it. “We realised quickly that we wanted to get on top of this not least because online video, in its very nature, can be quite precarious. We’ve all had the experience of seeing a video one week and trying to find it the next.”

One of Massa’s favourite films is a campaign video made by the stage director and musician Tom Guthrie to help raise awareness of the plight of freelance musicians. The adaptation of Pete Seeger’s Where Have All the Flowers Gone brought a tear to his eye, he said.

“It really says something about the way in which we are able to connect digitally and why this form of moving image is distinct from things that have come before it.”

The BFI expects to collect about 100 videos as part of the project, and curators have come up with their own suggestions to kickstart the public campaign. They include:

Joe Wicks’s PE-teacher-to-the-nation videos, where the fitness guru encourages people of all ages to start their day with lunge jumps, bunny hops, truffle shuffles and dreaded duck walks. His first session has been viewed 6.5m times.
Johnson’s video tweet of 27 March, where he informed the nation from Downing Street that he had mild symptoms, had taken a test on the advice of the chief medical officer, was positive for coronavirus and was therefore self-isolating.
Dawn Bilborough, a critical care nurse, had just finished a 48-hour shift when she made a short video from her car, in tears, telling how she had been unable to get fruit or vegetables from the supermarket. “You just need to stop it because it’s people like me that are going to be looking after you when you are at your lowest,” she said.
London housemates Pablo Hutchinson, Rowan Akin-Smith and Felix McKechnie missed their tube commute so much they recreated it in the shower in a funny, quickly made film for TikTok.
Victoria Emes’s parody of I Will Survive – “but I’ve got snacks/plenty of gin” – struck a chord with many people, gathering more than 345,000 views on YouTube.
Rap music is proving particularly resilient during the lockdown. An example is the south London drill artist Psychs’s track Spreadin’. It has had more than 975,000 views on YouTube.
Derbyshire police attracted both praise and derision when the force posted drone footage of people rambling and dog walking in the Peak District beauty spot of Curbar Edge.
Heather Stewart, creative director at the BFI, said it wanted examples of content that “made us laugh, cry, rage and has spurred us into action”. Recommendations can be made at the “Britain on lockdown ” section of the BFI website.