Beautiful Short Film Looks Back at Empty NYC in Early Pandemic

In the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, the world was fascinated with the imagery of New York City eerily empty. The sudden change was shocking even for New Yorkers, but seen as a sign of the city’s collective effort to flatten the curve — a phrase that no longer needs quotation marks around it. The warm weather of the past week has brought New Yorkers out of self-isolation. Photographs this past weekend from a packed Christopher Street pier in Greenwich Village sparked outrage, particularly in contrast with the viral video of NYPD officers violently arresting people in the East Village and other locales. The near-summer heat encouraged people to mosey into cars that had been indefinitely parked on the city streets and head to the beach. Traffic, from our observation, is looking more like pre-pandemic levels.

All of this pent up rage of a populace confined for nearly eight weeks is boiling over. It makes the footage of the early pandemic seem almost quaint and vintage. As such, it’s timely that Unforgotten Films, known for its haunting video on Hart Island and other “inaccessible” landscapes in New York City, has released “Unforgotten Minute — PAUSE NYC.” It shows sites like Grand Central Terminal, Times Square, the Broadway Theater District, World Trade Center Oculus, Penn Station, Wall Street, Prospect Park, Coney Island, the New York City subway, and various neighborhoods virtually empty of activity. It’s the first video in a new series called Unforgotten Minute, a short visual format which will allow the Unforgotten team to share more of our city’s under-appreciated landscapes, in response to current events.

On Thursday, Aaron Asis, founder of Unforgotten Films, will be hosting a virtual talk with Untapped New York about the New York Pavilion from the 1964-65 World’s Fair in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park. He will screen his short film Unforgotten which gives a rare look inside the off-limits structure. Joining him will be Mitch Silverstein and Stephanie Bohn founding members of the New York State Pavilion Paint Project who will describe how their efforts to simply give the Pavilion a few coats of paint and little love started a movement to save it from demolition. Also joining the discussion will be Salmaan Khan, founder of People for the Pavilion talking about the efforts to bring awareness and public access to the space after the Paint Project crew literally and figuratively opened the gates. Each will come with never-before-seen visuals and stories.

This live talk is organized for Untapped New York Insiders — get two months free with code STAYHOME (or three months free with a yearly plan). A video of the talk will also be made available to all our Insiders afterwards in the Virtual Content section of our website.

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