About Greetings from Isolation

Created by Canadian veteran film programmer Stacey Donen in the hopes of finding inspiration and enlightenment from our shared human experience of isolation under COVID-19, Greetings from Isolation has invited a broad range of Canadian filmmakers to participate in a capsule collection film project.

The project will include new and original works filmed while living in isolation from Matthew Rankin (The Twentieth Century), Sadaf Faroughi (Ava), Brett Story (The Hottest August) Ann Marie Fleming (Window Horses), Richard Fung (Sea in the Blood), John Greyson (Lilies), Larry Kent (Bitter Ash), Barbara Sternberg (Like a Dream That Vanishes), Peter Lynch (Project Grizzly), Gariné Torossian (Girl from Moush), Alan Zweig (Hurt) and Yuqi Kang (A Little Wisdom) among others. The collection of films will be released online beginning in May, 2020

Currently there are around around 100 participating Canadian filmmakers creating short films across genres, including fiction, documentary, essay, and video diary, with more filmmakers expected to come on board in the coming months. Each filmmaker will use their own phone or personal camera and anything else that is available to them in their living space, with no budget attached.

“A few weeks ago, I began my involuntary new life as an at-home kindergarten teacher with my 5 year-old Sophie, who incidentally thinks I am pretty boring. With the few minutes of the day not building forts, struggling with origami, or watching Buster Keaton movies, I reached out to a group of my filmmaker friends to gauge their interest in participating in this project,” said Stacey Donen. “What’s happening around us is unprecedented, momentous, and frankly hard to believe or understand. All around the world we find ourselves forcibly separated from one another. With our extraordinary new everyday routines, connecting with one another is more important than ever.”

Stacey Donen of VeryNiceVeryNice and his daughter Sophie.