Groundglass deliver for The Solidarity Fund

When you’re tasked with trying to document an entire country’s national effort during the pandemic, it’s important to try keep a sense of the what future will think of this present when it’s past. 

That’s what Laurence Hamburger at Groundglass was thinking when he was asked in the first months of lockdown by ECD Pete Khoury at TBWA Hunt Lascaris to look into making a film about the pro-bono work their founder John Hunt was doing for The Solidarity Fund. The Fund was a initiative of President Cyril Ramaphosa involving Business, Civil Society, Government and Labour to come together to assist the government in combating the worst effects of the pandemic.

Documenting everything from the early days of food parcels to their later work in creating a rural farming voucher initiative, from riding with frontline paramedics to pop up ventilator factories, Hamburger used six camera people and five editors to finally present the film on five local TV channels.

"we had such a good combination of age and experience, imagine the priveledge of having both a DOP like Chuanne Blofeld and Miles Goodall on your project. It was often a very beautiful experience going into places like we did with people like that. To let them loose and see them respond so intuitively to a small scene in an ambulance call out or rural farming initiative was everything I’ve so often wanted to do in ads but rarely get to do. The combination of commercial story-telling needs with genuine documentary approach is so rare and is exactly what Janette and I were looking to try doing when we joined up in 2019.” said Hamburger.

"The team talked about the incredible opportunity and responsibility they felt they had been given to try and document such a unique and often highly conflictual period in modern history."