In April, as we began to put together the Summer, 2020 issue of Filmmaker, we asked directors, cinematographers, editors and other film workers to send us their thoughts on the quarantine and their own creative lives. The responses printed here were collected from April through mid-June — personal statements that speak variously to individual filmmaking practices, films halted mid-production, politics, art and life. Read all the responses here. — Editor

So much going on now. COVID seemed to reveal the real virus. 

There’s been a worldwide awakening of the deep systemic problems in this country.

Film has the ability to show us how we are interconnected. We must be accountable to one another. The recent tragic events show the severe inequalities that Black people in America continue to endure.

We will come out of this a changed world. We are living through a transition from COVID to consciousness, and people with power and privilege have a duty to see that consciousness through. That requires listening, learning, vulnerability, but ultimately positive change and action!

Laura Merians Gonçalves is a cinematographer in Los Angeles.