Rethinking Ozu in the Age of COVID

Following restrictions of quarantine and lockdown, the current pandemic has greatly inflected the ways in which we engage with filmic images. Viewing a film in the present situation elicits an embodied reaction, forging an uncanny, liminal spectatorship that aligns with the collision between our present experiences and the filmic past. This video essay thus seeks to visually trace the unintended resonances found between the pandemic and Yasujiro Ozu’s cinema, drawing attention to the awareness of spatial positioning and distancing, as well as Ozu’s affinity for portraying the banality of the everyday – all of which are embodied in the pandemic-stricken present.