All rights reserved | © emily molli 2024
New Orleans - home of jazz and the world famous Mardi Gras - is usually a joyous, extravagant place. Music, culture and prayer have always fused here. But the virus has hit the New Orleans area hard, recently claiming the life of jazz legend Ellis Marsalis Jr.
So how does a city renowned for its noise and celebration, cope with a disease that's brought so much silence, sobriety, and loss?
A craft cocktail distillery in Asheville, North Carolina switched to producing large amounts of hand sanitizer and is giving it away for free. Taylor and Wendell Howard showed us how they're doing their part to fight the novel coronavirus.
DISTANCE is a show that illuminates the American experience during the COVID-19 pandemic — and beyond. Roving across the country in an RV, our crew of three brought the struggles, triumphs, and straight-talk that was missing from our collective dialogue. DISTANCE presents portraits of community leaders, entrepreneurs, healthcare professionals, and the most vulnerable among us at a time when learning to live together requires us to remain far apart. Our premiere episode captures a day in the life of a crew of craw fish and rice farmers in China, Texas.
My two colleagues and I the country to see how states are preparing and handling the novel coronavirus outbreak. We went to Virginia and North Carolina to see how farmers, crabbers, and a filmmaker were adapting to containment measures.
Dr. Michael Saag, an associate dean for global health at University of Alabama at Birmingham and infectious disease expert, had recently recovered from COVID-19. He walked us through the novel coronavirus and containment measures implemented by the United States.
After a Tornado devastated East Nashville, residents and business owners began recovery only to face more challenges amid a state-wide lockdown in the face of the novel coronavirus pandemic.
A priest in Nashville, Tennessee found new ways to hold mass at a time public gatherings were too risky. After broadcasting his service via livestream, his congregation would drive to the church parking lot to take communion.
In Chapel Hill, North Carolina, a jazz club owner gets tried new ways to keep her business open to the public. In Carrboro, a local council member and university professor considered how their community was affected and what lessons the country could learn from the pandemic.
With no end in sight to the spread of the novel coronavirus, cities across the United States enforced strict restrictions including shuttering businesses, closing schools, and setting curfews. In response to the steep rise of positive COVID-19 tests, New York, D.C. and Philadelphia all enacted varying degrees of lockdowns.
Disability Advocates raised the alarm after the Alabama Department of Public Health released a document showing guidelines that may de-prioritize COVID-19 patients with developmental disabilities.
Venezuela tightly controlled the sale of gasoline as the military seized control of pumps in at least three states. As the COVID-19 spread, some worried about how the shortage would affect their livelihoods as waits for gas could last days.
Like the US, workers in Bangkok were laid off from businesses, restaurants were only open for takeout, and food flew off the shelves in grocery stores.
On Friday May 8th, South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem sent a letter threatening legal action against the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe if they didn't remove their COVID road checkpoints within 48 hours. Tim Freccia spoke with the tribe's chairman Harold Frazier about the precautions the reservation is taking and the challenges they face amid this pandemic.
VISTAS showcased work commissioned from an extensive global roster of journalists and filmmakers. It explored international perspectives from deeply human angles, diving deep behind the headlines of stories that have been largely ignored or underreported by English-language outlets.
Survivors of domestic abuse in Bogotá, Colombia, literally had to leave everything behind to escape exponentially escalating violence as they were forced to shelter in place with their abusers in the midst of a global pandemic.
Director: Jorge DuránAssociate
Producer: Andrés Páramo
Director of Photography: Jaime Barbosa
Editor: Mateo Santamaria
Production Manager:
Rebecca Gibian
Executive Producers:
Rocco Castoro
Emily Molli
Special thanks:
Juliana Hernandez
Secretaria Distrital de la Mujer - Bogotá
We sat down with legendary explorer, journalist, filmmaker and author Robert Young Pelton. Perhaps most well known for his seminal New York Times’ best-selling tome, The World’s Most Dangerous Places, which explores in great detail some of the most perilous and life-threatening situations you’ll ever read about, taking places in hands down some of the worst hellholes the world has ever known.
Three decades later, Pelton’s expansive career has been made by thrusting himself into arguably more deadly and dangerous situations than anyone else in modern history — all with the goal of understanding what drives humanity’s unrelenting desire for war and power by his ability to somehow enter the frontlines of conflicts and speak to the brutal men running the show using methods that we can only chalk up to some strange, conflict-hardened magic he has singularly developed. Pelton has bared witness to some of the most pivotal — and bone-chillingly terrifying — moments in modern history, stretching across almost every continent, including: the battle of Qala-I-Jangi in Afghanistan, the siege of Grozny in Chechnya, living with LURD rebels in Liberia, the MILF in the Philippines, the Colombian FARC, the Taliban, al Qaeda members and most recently in Sirte, Libya inside the battle against ISIS and the first person to document the White Army amid the chaos of the South Sudanese Civil War.
Yet, Pelton says, the extreme dangers he’s faced during those experiences pale in comparison to the COVID-19 pandemic’s potential for long-term death and devastation. He resides in San Diego where he also designs survival tools for his company DPx Gear and holds over two dozen patents.
REVOLUTION RETROSPECTIVE presents dispatches from the streets of an America in turmoil as citizens demand equality and justice for all in the wake of the killing of George Floyd. This episode in Washington, D.C. follows Rahim, who has been protesting for over a month, and the occupation of H street near the newly installed "Black Lives Matter Plaza" near the White House.
DISTANCE documents the experiences of everyday Americans in the wake of COVID-19. Filmed by a small crew roving the United States in an RV, each episode offers a window into the rapidly changing lives of an individual or close-knit group grappling with the new normal. Their stories, stitched together, outline the contours of a society reshaped by the pandemic and ensuing economic collapse. In this episode of DISTANCE, founder of Bikers for Christ, Pastor Z, holds an open air Memorial Day service in the parking lot of his ministry playing with his band and preaching from his experiences and the bible.
Chile is known to be one of Latin America’s wealthiest, most stable and peaceful countries, but thousands of people have been protesting since October 6th, placing the country is in the grip of a political and economic upheaval. Journalist Joshua Tucker has been on the ground in Santiago covering the protests and spoke to people about why they're in the streets.
Trump held his first rally since an informal impeachment inquiry was announced. Zach Roberts went to Minneapolis where thousands attended the rally, many waiting up to 36 hours to secure a spot close to the President. Hundreds more protested outside the arena, and later in the evening confronted Trump supporters and faced police officers who used pepper spray to control the crowd.
East Turkistani protesters marched through Washington DC chanting, "Support us America!" and "East Turkistan is not Xinjiang!" The activists called for action from the U.S Government and went into detail about the treatment of Uyghurs and says it is only attempting to defend its citizens from Islamic terrorism.
The East Turkistan National Awakening Movement, or ETNAM, held a press conference to release coordinates of more suspected concentration and forced labor camps. Uyghurs, the ethnically Turkic people who inhabit the area, are calling for the restoration of independence, as well as international oversight of potential atrocities happening in the region.
Electricity cuts and taxes on internet calls were the last straw for many Lebanese who have been facing a corrupt government and burdensome austerity measures. This accumulating pressure ignited the largest spontaneous protests the country has seen in over a decade, but the non-sectarian nature of these are unique. Recently, the leader of Hezbollah asked his supporters to not join the protests. Dustin Weinreb went on the ground in Beirut, asking people why they are protesting.