Incident

Incident + Scenes of Extraction

Film reconstructs a police shooting in Chicago in 2018, reassembling the event and its immediate aftermath from a variety of viewpoints, including surveillance, security, dashboard, and body-worn cameras as a continuous, synchronized split-screen montage.

“Incident” is both a deconstruction and a reconstitution of a specific event that transpires over 20 minutes in real time, using multiple synchronized viewpoints. One of the foundational fault lines on which America was built is exposed once again here: the inability to reconcile the right to bear arms with the fear of others having those same rights. The same paradox is also applied to the police camera here – if it doesn’t protect you, it is a potentially damaging witness in another’s hands. I was inspired by Akira Kurosawa’s "Rashomon" (1951), in which one event is interpreted in several ways, depending on who is telling the story. I thought about how this could still be applied to a modern-day crime story with the use of surveillance footage, which seeks to find an objective truth, but is still beholden to the narrative of whoever presents the story”, says Bill Morrison.