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Sawyer Avenue, Sunday Afternoon
In Sawyer Avenue, Sunday Afternoon, Bill Morrison presents a chronology of an ICE raid in Chicago and the civil resistance that follows it. A found-footage collage of mobile phone and bodycam footage, identical to the maelstrom in the news and on social media, shows how three masked officers cold-bloodedly throw a Latin American man to the ground, handcuff him, and drag him into an unmarked pick-up van. All of this in broad daylight.
Soon, the whole neighbourhood is in turmoil. Protesting neighbours in dressing gowns, cyclists and other motorists do everything they can to stop them. They shout, film, throw insults, until an officer slams his foot down on the gas pedal and drives over a bystander’s foot. “Why are you doing this?” asks the abducted man in Spanish. The officers are Latino too. They shrug.
Morrison’s editing is efficient and virtually devoid of commentary. He intervenes only as a collector, bringing together different camera angles. Apart from some on-screen text that contextualises the situation, he needs no words to show that Operation Midway Blitz—as the Trump regime calls this crackdown—is nothing more than a showy title designed to sugarcoat fascist, unpunished abuse of power. Sawyer Avenue, Sunday Afternoon offers a frustrating, poignant, and, above all, humane observation of just one of thousands of similar interventions.