Strange Days Diary NYC is both exactly the film you expect it to be and something a little bit different. Yes, it's "another" pandemic film tapping into the weirdness and quiet horror of that time, those "strange days," and yet it's also something you may not exactly want to see but you likely certainly remember. 

Director Zack Winestine, holed up with his wife in a Far West Village apartment, experienced the pandemic from the safety of his intimate high-rise apartment, though calling anywhere "safe" during the pandemic seems foolish at best. Winestine began chronicling the experiences within his neighborhood as COVID-19 was announced, life began to shut down, the federal government's incompetence began to rage, the world started to open back up again, and things returned, supposedly, to something of a new normal. 

Strange Days is the kind of film that triggers personal memories. In my case, I had just been out of the hospital four months after a major illness and limb loss. I'd been back to work only one week when my government agency was shut down and sent home to work remotely. I would stay working remotely for a year almost exactly with my return to the office subsequently a hybrid schedule that remains to this day. 

Life changed, indeed. 

I am a paraplegic/double amputee and considered among the vulnerable populations, though to this day I've yet to experience the virus - a combination of good luck and consistent vaccination (sorry, anti-vax folks).

Winestine is a longtime community activist and I can't help but think it's that activist lens that really comes to life in Strange Days. "Winestine has written and directed two previous feature films, States of Control (Pathfinder Pictures) and Caravan/Prague (Cinema Libre), along with several shorts including On Some Consequences of a Passage by Guy Debord and the historically significant documentary Building the Word Trade Center." There's a quiet urgency to his work here that also brings to mind his history in music videos for the likes of B-52's, ZZ Top, and Public Enemy among others. He captures the little nuances in the way a community changes when challenges occur, tragedies happen, or a culture simply shifts. Strange Days isn't a particularly dramatic film. It truly is a visual diary, a journey through the strange days of COVID-19 within the life of one particularly New York City neighborhood even as Winestine regularly adds to the screen a simple graphic acknowledging how many COVID deaths have occurred in NYC and nationwide. 

Strange Days Diary NYC gives something resembling a voice to a strange and weird and often tragic time for many of us. It reminds us of the awkwardness, the isolation, and the surreal truths that would come to run parallel to rising racial justice protests. While I'm not sure I would call Strange Days Diary NYC a necessary view, I would say it's a quietly powerful view and a reminder that through all of these traumatic life experiences we're still a community and we still belong to one another. 

You can check it out on Fawesome and through a growing list of streaming platforms. 

Written by Richard Propes
The Independent Critic