Moving video series beautifully captures Irish life lockdown, both at home and abroad

Lost Together is a project launched by Dublin-based video editor Luca Byrne. Designed for IGTV, each episode capturing the lives of Irish people in lockdown.

Wanting to keep creative during the lockdown, video editor Luca Byrne asked his Instagram followers to send him videos and voice memos on WhatsApp, filming and talking about their days to combine into a series of documentary shorts. “I wanted to do something to give my life some meaning and motivation while also sharing something with other people at a time when we can’t be together,” he explains.

Wanting to focus on the minor as well as major moments of the experience, he encouraged people to send in everything from poetry and short stories to videos of your dog snoozing and your work from home space.

 

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A post shared by Luca (@coolhandluca) on Mar 30, 2020 at 12:05pm PDT

The result are six beautiful episodes so far, looking at the inner and outer workings of humanity during lockdown. Capturing the simple things like the arrival of post, or a perfectly brewed cup of coffee, each episode is imbued with voices and clips from a scattering of lives across the country and continents.

One person announces the “big news” that they’ve discovered a family of mice living under their recycling bin outside. “Our two little humans are feeding them and the mice don’t seem to mind.”

Others discuss the emotion of the moments, the anxiety of having so much time and an expectation to do something significant with it. “Yesterday was the first day in two weeks that I didn’t cry,” says one narrator.

 

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A post shared by Luca (@coolhandluca) on Apr 20, 2020 at 11:40am PDT

Running between five and ten minutes, each episode shows snippets of people’s lives, from the empty streets of Berlin, the methodical kneading of bread, waves crashing over concrete steps or a cat stretched out on a shard of sunshine.

Playing and frolicking about the house with your siblings as you had done once as children, or befriending neighbours that had long been invisible when life was “normal”, it’s a quietly moving tribute to the complexities and simplicities of this strange moment and the sense of community held within our shared experience.

Episodes are shared on Luca’s Instagram every week or so and Luca is looking for more people to be part of it. If you’re interested, you can email him at hi@lukebyrne.ie or DM him directly on Instagram. If you felt moved by his work, he’s also asking for small contributions (€3) to help pay his designer and composer.

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