"Coronation": they filmed the start of the pandemic in Wuhan

Since we only have platforms for the moment, for lack of rooms always closed, here is a new one for those passionate about documentaries, and decryption on the chaos of the world.

Explore, which will cost 3.99 euros per month from this Thursday on the Apple TV app, is the first platform of its kind developed by a French partner, Mediawan, with Apple.

On the program, more than 500 hours of committed films, the guideline.

Like the first emblematic production launched by Explore, on the occasion of the first anniversary of the confinement, “Coronation” by Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, activist in exile for several years and superstar of contemporary art.

He directed, edited and produced "Coronation" from nearly fifteen amateur videographers who filmed their daily lives for him in the city of Wuhan, the city in China from which the global epidemic of the coronavirus started, and 14 of its hospitals, clandestinely, as the virus raged there in January 2020.

We treat the emergency, not the human

No voiceover, but incredible scenes, ordinary or terrible, in an atmosphere of snow which then covers Wuhan.

We see a couple returning to Wuhan just before quarantine, controlled in a dreamlike desert atmosphere by guards or police who are still making do with faulty thermometers recording 32 or 34 °.

"It's winter," the controlled driver tries to joke, who is in fact 36. The smile chokes when one walks into a hospital where the camera very modestly captures the extreme difficulties of an old man. breathe.

The breath of life that struggles to the end.

The film is a diary from January 23 to April 8, the date of deconfinement in a city which has seen workers arrive from all over the region to build makeshift hospitals and who then find themselves no longer knowing whether they are have the right to return home.

Lunar scenes of unanswered requests for information by anonymous everyday heroes who come up against an administration as helpless as them.

We treat the emergency, not the human.

Rarely have been so gripped by the abandonment and isolation generated by the terror of the disease, although the city's quasi-military efforts to adapt to the virus are also impressive.

The freezing coldness of these images, often filmed with a lot of poetry, gives off a universal dimension.

Relatives called in single file by the dozen who have to get up when "the deceased has a card starting with 422 111 and 405 115", this industrial funeral home where the ashes of the victims are collected like in a huge supermarket by relatives.

"It is not possible that someone disappears like that, in silence", enraged a son who can not recover the urn of his father.

It is the latter's work colleagues, with inhuman administrative coldness, who seem to be the custodians.

Kafka in Wuhan.

A documentary of immense poetic force

Ai Weiwei also brings to life family scenes between a communist grandmother, whose devotion to the state remains total, and a dissident son.

Absolute mutual incomprehension and yet a form of gentleness.

"When is this all going to end?"

A woman whispers.

This film, released in 2020, shows how the documentary can release an immense poetic force by describing everyday scenes that we never see, however, because the images were filmed without permission.

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A symbol of what the Explore platform wants to be, which also offers history and science docs and portraits on social subjects.

Unpublished films, acquisitions but also exclusive documentaries produced to enrich the original offer are announced by Mediawan, the first French publisher to sign with Apple TV.

This streaming service dedicated to documentaries is available on the Apple TV app, Explore icon.

Among the first big films announced: "Air Jordan: the story of a cult basketball", "The hippos of Escobar", "Banksy & the street art revolution", "The eyes of Atacama" or "My generation, the swinging London of the 60's ”.

The Apple TV app is available on iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, iPod touch, Mac, select Samsung, LG, and Sony smart TVs, Roku and Amazon Fire TV devices, and on PlayStation and Xbox consoles.