Incident

In 2018, a man was killed by police on a Chicago street. Bill Morrison - whose impressive filmography, which often makes use of archival footage, prompted the New York Times to describe him as “the eminent poet of lost films” - here revisits and transposes the central idea of Japanese director Akira Kurosawa’s great classic Rashomon (1951) to a contemporary crime: a fact can be interpreted in different ways depending on who is reporting it. In their search for so-called objective truth, surveillance cameras are also dependent on the story of the person presenting the images. Through a composite montage of images from surveillance, security and police cameras, Incident recreates the event and its consequences, featuring vain justifications, altercations and attempts to flee the scene of the crime. Bill Morrison delivers a chilling political investigation that powerfully conveys the problem of police violence in the United States and its inexorable outcome.
Emilie Bujès