The legendary filmmaker explores what the shutdown has meant to him in the project set to air as part of 'Lockdown Culture With Mary Beard.'
Martin Scorsese has made a short film for the BCC about being in isolation.
The self-shot film in which the iconic director explores what the lockdown has meant to him is set to premiere on May 28 in the final episode of Lockdown Culture With Mary Beard, the retitled new series of the BBC's flagship arts program Front Row Late. Lee Daniels also appears on the show, explaining why he believes the current shutdown in Hollywood could be a radical creative opportunity for filmmakers.
"What I look forward to in the future is carrying with me what I have been forced to learn in these circumstances," said Scorsese of his isolation experience. "It is the essential. The people you love. Being able to take care of them and be with them as much as you can."
Throughout its latest run, Lockdown Culture With Mary Beard has featured cultural figures such Margaret Atwood and her sister with a homespun puppet show created at their kitchen table, sculptor Antony Gormley on his state of isolation and creativity, Kwame Kwei-Armah with Antonio Pappano and Juliet Stevenson on why theater matters and Icelandic-Danish visual artist Olafur Eliasson in a debate about nature and art.
The show has also included an exclusive monologue told through the voice of the COVID-19 virus from 2019's Booker Prize winner Bernardine Evaristo, John Donne poem readings by both Helen Mirren and Emma Thompson and a discussion about the power of poetry during a pandemic with Game of Thrones actress Emilia Clarke, poet Lemn Sissay and historian David Olusoga.
"Martin Scorsese makes a wonderful end to the series. We see him at home, thinking about lockdown through the lens of classic movies, like Hitchcock's The Wrong Man," said host Beard. "But what's really clever is that this great Hollywood luminary also gets us to look at Hitchcock again afresh through the lens of our current predicament. I was absolutely over the moon when he agreed to do it for us. It feels a bit like hosting a little premiere. And it all contributes to a pretty amazing finale."
