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Image: Martin Scorsese

Watch Martin Scorsese’s new quarantine short film

The filmmaker’s meditation on the pandemic includes clips of Hitchcock movies

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Martin Scorsese has been busy while in quarantine. He’s been on family Zoom calls, as per his Instagram, but he’s also made a short film, which premiered on Thursday on the BBC’s Lockdown Culture with Mary Beard.

The short, available to view in three parts on Twitter and with a runtime of less than five minutes, is a reflection on life in lockdown. Scorsese weaves in clips of classic movies like Alfred Hitchcock’s The Wrong Man and Robert Siodmak’s The Killers as he reflects on his experience being quarantined. “At first, it was a day or so of a kind of relief,” Scorsese says to the camera. “I didn’t have to go anywhere or do anything [...] and then, the anxiety set in.”

Scorsese’s ruminations, all recorded on his phone and varying in terms of portrait or landscape orientation, switch between footage of Scorsese himself and of objects around his home, including family vacation photos and window blinds. Scorsese also wonders just when and how production on his new film, Killers of the Flower Moon, will resume, given how much the pandemic is affecting the film industry.

Though very brief, the short film is a fun peek into how a legendary filmmaker is coping with self-isolation, as well as a look at what a Scorsese vlog might be like.

Watch the film below:


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