As officials remove two COVID-19 checkpoints that have kept the Florida Keys shut down for more than two months, Miami-based TV producer and humanitarian Chris Sloan has released a short film visually chronicling Key West’s isolation. The eight-minute mini-doc, Key West: 66 Days of Paradise, Interrupted, gives viewers a rare and haunting insider’s look at the world-famous tourist hotspot as they’ve never seen it before… a surreal quiet pausing Key West’s bustling nightlife, prolific local music/art scene and the quirky allure that has made this tropical paradise home to such literary greats as Ernest Hemingway, Tennessee Williams and Judy Blume.
With access reserved strictly for locals and essential workers, Sloan shot this footage at the height of Key West’s quarantine in mid-May while he was there hosting a food drive on behalf of his nonprofit, Caleb and Calder Sloan’s Awesome Foundation. He used a DJI Osmo with 1080p motion stabilization and hyperlapse to capture striking scenes of such quintessential Key West destinations as the Southernmost Point Buoy (only 90 miles to Cuba), Sloppy Joe’s, Mallory Square, Garrison Bight, Duval Street, the Ernest Hemingway Home, Pier House Resort and Higgs and Smathers beaches, all minus the throngs of visitors.
There's a strange, tranquil beauty in the near-overnight disappearance of tourism and yet one fraught with foreboding as the city’s chief economy vanished with it. The area’s employment rate went from Florida’s lowest to the state’s second highest in just a matter of months. However, the unprecedented Florida Keys lockdown resulted in a much smaller number of COVID-19 cases and deaths than most counties,
Yet, even though Sloan’s mini-doc chronicles measures for which the long-term impact was unknown at the time of filming, it also shares a message of upbeat optimism as the Florida Keys lockdowns have lifted (effective June 1).
“Life returns, and Key West will rise again to be the quirky and charming melting pot that makes it truly one of my favorite places in the world,” said Sloan.
