A Uniquely American Story: My Winter 2025

The Pulitzer Prize-winning Chicago-based journalist Jamie Kalven is an old family friend of mine. We grew up in the Kenwood neighborhood of Chicago, a couple blocks from one another, albeit separated by a generation. Jamie graduated from the University of Chicago Laboratory High School in 1965, the same year I was born. I graduated from U-High in 1983.

In recent years, our career interests have begun to dovetail. My film work became more documentary, and more grounded in social issues. With his journalistic work on police oversight, Jamie’s practice had become increasingly involved in examining police videos, and suing for their release to the public through the Freedom of Information Act.

I recall one time that we randomly met on the street when I was home visiting my parents in Chicago. I mentioned to him this idea of writing a modern-day Rashomon (Akira Kurosawa, 1950) in which each retelling of a crime would be from a different type of camera and would represent a different point of view – an iPhone, a surveillance camera, a dashboard camera, closed-circuit TV, a body cam. They would all tell a different truth.

After the police killing of Harith Augustus in 2018, Jamie wrote about the case in a series of articles that appeared in The Intercept, and produced six videos entitled Six Durations of a Split Second, in collaboration with Forensic Architecture out of London.

In 2022, the Chicago Police Department finally released perhaps the most damning of the police videos of the Augustus killing, the one in which a dashboard camera captures PPO Dillan Halley firing five shots at Augustus as he flees into the street. With it, they also released over 20 hours of footage associated with the July 2018 shooting. In the wake of this data dump, Kalven revisited the case, writing an epilogue that appeared in The Intercept in August 2022, In the Aftermath of a Police Killing, the Justifications Begin Immediately.

A few weeks after the article appeared, Jamie wrote a note to my family: “Several years ago, Bill and I had a conversation about the possibility of creating a film that told a story solely through body camera footage. That remains an intriguing idea. This piece suggests some of the dramatic possibilities.” I remember my mom, Kate, 90 years old at the time, asking me if I had read Jamie’s article yet.

I had not. While I was familiar with his earlier reporting on the case, with this article Jamie had included clips of the new footage that had been released, and used them like footnotes to support the conversations he described. I downloaded their source from the YouTube channel administered by COPA (Chicago’s Civilian Office of Police Accountability) and began to play around with them. I saw that you could tell the story from many different angles continuously and synchronously. So I started applying rules. One of the rules was that one should always be able to see Augustus, alive or dead, so he is pretty much visible from the moment the police encounter happens until he’s carried away in the ambulance. Following this, I continued with a rough edit, synchronizing clips that overlapped and editing them into a four-quadrant format which allowed multiple views, including one of Augustus. I showed Jamie a rough treatment of what I planned to do with this footage, and he got excited by what he saw and gave me his blessing to continue along with all the footage that had been released on the case – some 20 hours of surveillance, dashboard and body-worn cameras of all the officers who reported to the scene. With that, I began a new edit. I wrote to Jamie that I thought we had found our Rashomon.

The resulting film was Incident (30 min, 2023), which premiered at Visions du Reel in April 2023, and later that year won the International Documentary Award as Best Short Documentary film. In 2024, it won a dozen other film festival awards, including the Florida Film Festival, which qualified it for the Academy Award consideration. In August, it was released by The New Yorker on their online platform, and on December 19, it was shortlisted for an Academy Award, meaning it was one of 15 titles that might advance to be nominated.

On December 21, I returned to Chicago with my wife, Laurie Olinder, heavy with the news that a dear friend of ours, the photographer Elizabeth Felicella, after a two-year fight with a rare form of leukemia, would pass that night.

I spent an otherwise joyous holiday with my family, my mom, now 92, and two of my three sisters and their husbands. We returned to New York to begin the new year. What follows is a chronological recounting of my year so far.

Most winter weekends when I am in New York, I meet with a small group of swimmers at Brighton Beach, where we swim in the ocean before repairing to a Russian restaurant for lunch. On January 1, around 30 friends joined for the annual plunge. I saw a mutual friend of Elizabeth’s and we embraced for a long time.

January 1, 2025 swim: Air 47ºF, water 42ºF, 0.5 mile swim.

On January 3, a French documentary film team, Frédérique DeVaux and Michel Amarger, arrived from Paris to make a long-planned documentary film on me and my work. They had booked a room at a Chinatown hotel called the Grand Street Hotel. They came to my place to conduct the first of a series of interviews.

The next day I took Fred and Michel to Brighton Beach to capture a typical weekend swim.

January 4 Brighton Beach swim: Air 32ºF, water 39ºF, wind gusts 35mph, 0.25 mile swim

On January 6, a joint session of Congress counted the certified electoral votes that would make Republican Donald Trump President of the United States at noon on January 20.

Jamie Kalven arrived in New York for a screening that evening at Metrograph. Fred and Michel filmed us discussing the origins of Incident at our place before filming our Q&A at Metrograph that evening. Jamie and I would go on to have dinner with the distributors of our film, Paul Moakley from the New Yorker, and Sarah Lash from Condé Nast.

Throughout the dinner with the New Yorker folks, I was distracted by news that my mom, who had been complaining of abdominal pain, had been taken to the emergency room by my sister Sarah, who lives near her in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago. They would spend the entire night – 12 hours – waiting for a bed at the University of Chicago Hospital.

The next morning at 8 a.m., I received an ominous text from my sister Ann, who is a doctor living in Albuquerque, where it was 6 a.m. “Call me,” it simply read. My mother had been diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer, for which there would be no treatment. A doctor informed my sister Sarah “unfortunately pancreatic cancer yields neither good quality nor good quantity of life.”

I spoke to my mom, who was in surprisingly good spirits considering the news. I told her we would get her to the finish line, and she liked that metaphor. I then told the French doc team that I would need to leave New York to see my mom. They were astounded. At the very same moment I texted them, they had received a text that Michel’s mother, living in the South of France, had just slipped into a coma from which she would not return. I then caught a plane to Chicago, the first of a half dozen trips to Chicago I would make this winter.

I spent a couple nights in Chicago, sleeping on a sofa in my mom’s hospital room.

I left Thursday morning to fly back to New York to attend the Cinema Eye Honors, which would be held that evening, January 9, at the New York Academy of Medicine.

The mood was somewhat somber at the Cinema Eye Honors. Wildfires were spreading throughout the Los Angeles area, impacting the doc film community that had come together to celebrate in New York. By the end of the month, some 14 wildfires in the area would kill 29 people, forcing 200,000 to evacuate, and burn some 18,000 homes and 57,000 acres of land.

As it happened, Incident won the award for nonfiction short that night. In my acceptance remarks, I recalled how my mom, at age 90, had asked me if I had read Jamie’s article. I did not mention was that she had entered hospice at home that same day. Kate was nonetheless able to see my speech as it was streamed over her laptop.

On January 10, I resumed my interviews with the French doc team, all of us convinced it was better to work than to grieve at this moment. They would also film a Zoom meeting I would have with the director Elkhanah Pulitzer concerning the upcoming technical rehearsals for the Metropolitan Opera premiere of John Adams’ Antony and Cleopatra, for which I had made video projections. Rehearsals were set to begin on February 3 at the Met. That evening, I returned to watch Christian Marclay’s The Clock at MoMA, with an old high school friend visiting from out of town, Sara Tedeschi.

On January 11, I attended a screening of Incident at the Museum of the Moving Image, along with a 2021 short film of mine, Buried News. I gave Jennifer Bilfield a ride to BRIC, where we both had tickets to see David T. Little’s Black Lodge.

January 12, Brighton Beach swim: Air 38ºF, water 38ºF, 0.56 mile swim.

January 14: I was expecting to hear from Fred and Michel, who were departing New York that day and needed to collect a drive full of my film material. After getting vaccinated for COVID in the morning, I still had not heard from them. When I finally did, they were distraught. A two-alarm fire had consumed the top floors of the Grand Street Hotel while they had been out getting coffee. They were unable to get back into the hotel to collect their equipment and belongings. We rode down to meet them in a nearby coffee shop where they were huddled together as their phone was charging behind the counter. We agreed they would probably never forget the making of this film. They later were able to retrieve their belongings, and while they had to throw some of their clothes away, their equipment and drives were thankfully undamaged. I was surprised to learn that in the news accounts of the fire, the Grand Street Hotel was routinely referred to as a homeless shelter. I found it incredibly moving and inspiring that these two artists had come to New York in the middle of the winter without any funding to film me, staying in a homeless shelter for 10 nights. And when they were beset by such a string of tragedies, they were able to keep working, to keep moving forward.

I had a longstanding commitment to present two programs of work in Lithuania at the Vilnius Short Film Festival. That night I took a flight to Amsterdam, and then another flight to Vilnius the next morning. In Vilnius, I gave a three-hour lecture on my work, and presented a program of shorts in the cinema over the following two days. I was strangely sleepless the entire time, never catching more than an hour or two of sleep. I would run by the Neris river to Vingis Park in the middle of the night to relieve tension.

In his final address to the nation, President Joe Biden issued a warning that “an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms, and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead.”

On January 19, I flew back from Vilnius via Amsterdam to Chicago, where I rejoined my family.

I would spend the next 10 days in my mom’s apartment with some combination of my three sisters and our spouses, while other friends and relatives would call. It was a fitting goodbye for her and during her last days, she was able to come into her living room and preside over dinners at her dining room table.

January 20 was inauguration day. The 47th President of the United States marked the occasion by withdrawing the U.S. from the Paris Climate Agreement and the World Health Organization, and pardoning all the January 6 rioters who had been convicted of crimes related to the attempt to overthrow the results of the 2020 presidential election. Elon Musk threw two hand gestures widely interpreted as Nazi salutes. And the Proud Boys marched through the streets of the Capitol chanting, “Whose streets? Our streets!”

In Chicago, Hamline Elementary school, which is 90% Hispanic, was visited by Secret Service agents investigating what they described as a threat made by an 11-year-old student who had posted a video deriding President Trump, following the proposed U.S. ban of TikTok. The agents were denied access to the school.

On January 23, the Oscar nominations were to be announced at 7:30 a.m. CST. I got my mom up, administered her painkillers, made us some coffee, set up the monitor in front of her recliner and settled into the program. Despite the early hour, the two hosts of the program, Bowen Yang and Rachel Sennott, seemed wide awake and buzzy, beamed in from what seemed like a completely different universe from the gray dawn now revealing the horizon of Lake Michigan. My mom and I held hands, while we watched with my sister Ellen. When the category for Documentary Short was announced, we squeezed hands as we heard the title Incident rattled off along with the others. I went out to meet Jamie at the Original Pancake House on East 47th Street, a block away from where we had had our Rashomon conversation a decade before.

Rabbi Daniel Kirzane, who is new to our synagogue, visited my mom at the apartment and asked her questions about her life, so as to be able to speak about her in a meaningful way at the funeral. I thought this would be somewhat transactional and perfunctory, but I was surprised by his interest and sensitivity. Indeed, by his soulfulness. He asked her about her courtship with my dad. My dad was stationed in Germany for two years during the Korean War, before they were married. The rabbi asked if they had written any letters to one another. “Oh yes, almost every day! We wrote hundreds of letters!” she replied. It was a question that none of us had ever asked of our parents. As it turned out, these letters were also easily accessible in a storage locker located on the top floor of her apartment building. And there in a plastic bin were two overstuffed brown envelopes, one marked “Bill to Kate,” the other marked “Kate to Bill,” both overflowing with letters, folded into thin international mailing envelopes. That night, we began what became a nightly ritual. I would read my dad’s letters to her, and one of my three sisters would read a letter from her to him. It replaced movies and episodic television as the nightly activity, and filled my mom with such joy, remembering young, passionate love and the specific events mentioned in each letter. In one letter, my dad mused that these letters might one day be transcribed and printed, the different subjects and persons mentioned indexed, so that children and grandchildren and great grandchildren could read them. It was an astonishing discovery, hiding in plain sight among our heirlooms all our lives.

On January 29, I planted a camera in front of my mother as she painted. Over the past 10 years of her life, we had begun painting together along with my sister Sarah, and my wife, Laurie. We would go on vacations together that functioned like artist retreats, all of us painting alongside one another on folding tables. Now she was finishing her last painting, a portrait of a friend’s granddaughter, while murmuring little instructions to herself (“We don’t want ivory black. We like Burnt Siena…”).

The next day, I returned to New York. I taped a Behind the Scenes interview with The New Yorker at Condé Nast’s offices in One World Trade Center. Leaving the WTC, I captured a squirrel who was busily making a nest inside the exterior walls of the building:

I attended performances by Vijay Iyer at the Village Vanguard, and by Ellen Fullman and Theresa Wong at Roulette. I took in a few more hours of Christian Marclay’s The Clock at MoMA with my friend David Gersten.

February 1: Brighton Beach swim: Air 34ºF, water 38ºF, 0.27 mile swim.

On February 3, tech rehearsals for Antony and Cleopatra began at the Met. We were ushered through introductory meetings and protocol briefings by human resources. We got projections up in the late afternoon, before we broke for the day.

I talked to my mom on the phone for about 20 minutes. I would learn later that that one phone call took all the energy she had that day.

When I arrived the morning of February 4, my sister Sarah told me that my mother had declined rapidly over the weekend and could no longer get out of bed. I explained the situation to my colleagues and once again flew to Chicago, this time to say goodbye to her while she could still speak to me. I spent Wednesday February 5 with her.

I returned to the Met on Thursday morning, February 6, and we worked on the opera.

Thursday night, I attended a New Yorker screening of Incident in a program moderated by New Yorker film critic, Richard Brody, which also included the live-action short I Am Not a Robot, the other Oscar-nominated film the magazine distributed this year.

I went back to tech rehearsal at the Met on Friday February 7 and caught another late flight back to Chicago on Friday evening.

I spent that weekend with mom and sisters and brothers-in-law. We made playlists of her favorite music, and sang her favorite songs around her bed. We watched photos of her life slide by on a digital frame. The rabbi returned and blessed her. We all said goodbye to her once again, though this time she could not speak in return. I was grateful to have had that Wednesday with her.

On Monday, I flew out to Los Angeles for two screenings of Incident, one at the Culver Theater in Culver City, and another at William Morris Endeavor in Beverly Hills. I caught the redeye back to Chicago and was back in my mom’s apartment 22 hours after I’d left.

The nurse visited but was unable to read a pulse or any blood pressure from my mom. Her breathing had become labored, the “death rattle” that I remembered hearing the days before my dad died. I had two interviews on Tuesday February 11, one at noon and another at 1pm. After the second one, my sister Ann told me that my mom was awake and making eye contact. I came into her room and indeed she was able to fix her eyes on mine and we stared at each other. I rubbed CBD cream on her bloated belly – the “Bad Baby,” as we had come to call the cancerous room of her abdomen. I sat with her for about 90 minutes. I read one of my dad’s letters to her. I stroked her forehead. And presently her labored breathing subsided. And it was suddenly quiet. And at 3:08 p.m., she had left.

I texted my sisters, who returned to the apartment. And then I went on a run by the lakefront, and filmed the sheets of ice that extended out as far as the eye could see, forming a slow moving ice blanket over the water as the sun set behind me.

President Trump signed an executive order essentially putting Elon Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) in charge of the U.S. government.

On February 12, Jamie and I taped a piece for Chicago Tonight: Black Voices, a program on WTTW, Chicago Public Television.

At the 61st Munich Security Conference, Vice President JD Vance refused a meeting with German chancellor Olaf Scholz, instead meeting with Alice Weidel, the far-right leader of AfD, Alternative for Germany.

February 15, Brighton Beach swim: Air 35ºF, water 37ºF, 0.26 mile swim.

On February 17, we returned to Chicago, this time for my mom’s funeral on Tuesday February 18. It was a beautiful service filled with music and poetry. We sat shiva on the 18th and 19th. And I returned to New York on February 20.

February 22, Brighton Beach swim: Air 32ºF, water 34ºF, 0.26 mile swim.

We drove out to Jamesport, New York, where I participated in a panel discussion presented by North Fork Contemporary with four other artists who have a practice on the North Fork of Long Island. The discussion was about what led to inspiration, and sustained practice.

On February 25, I flew out to Los Angeles for the nominees dinner. Without question, the highlight of the evening for me was posing for a picture with Isabella Rossellini for our mutual friend Guy Maddin. We both wore polka dots, and she a nametag.

February 27, Manhattan Beach, CA: Air 70ºF, water 57ºF, 0.25 mile swim.

On February 27, President Trump and Vice President Vance attacked Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office in an event seemingly designed to announce the United States’ support of Russia over the Ukraine and Europe.

On Saturday March 1, we picked up Vivian and Arnold, the mother and stepfather of Harith Augustus, the barber whose death is documented in Incident. I had met them once before at the Chicago premiere of Incident at the Chicago Humanities Festival in November 2023. The family had been extremely private about their loss, and had refused all interviews, preferring not to grieve in public. After the screening, Vivian had stood up and addressed the room: “Now the world can see what happened to my son.” And then she’d turned to Jamie and myself and said, “And it’s up to you to make sure the world sees this film.” My mother Kate greeted her afterwards.

Now 16 months later, they were joining us at the Academy Awards. We found them outside Burbank Airport and took them to the Roosevelt Hotel. We fell into conversation about Chicago and I felt instantly at ease with them.

Arnold had a good time messing with people in the elevator at the Roosevelt, asking them why everyone was dressed up, and when they told him, asking what the Oscars were, before they were on to him. We all met for lunch before the ceremony: Arnold and Vivian; Jamie Kalven and his wife, Patricia Evans; Laurie Olinder and myself; Laurie’s brother Bruce Olinder (who was celebrating his birthday) and his wife, Elaine Levi; and two journalists from the Invisible Institute of Chicago, Maira Khwaja and Trina Reynolds-Tyler. Arnold, who is a deacon at a Baptist church in Chicago, led a prayer over lunch.

Possibly the funniest moment of the event for me was taking a golf cart from the Roosevelt Hotel to the red carpet at the Dolby Theater in order to get past security. Something about being all dressed up and then riding in the back of this bumpy golf cart to go 500 feet down Hollywood Boulevard struck Laurie and me as somewhat absurd, and we both broke into a fit of laughter. It was a fitting start to the ceremony and one I may never forget.

While our film did not win an Oscar, we were grateful that it had been recognized on such a grand stage. (The doc short award went to The Only Girl in the Orchestra. The other New Yorker-distributed film, I Am Not a Robot, won the award for Best Live-Action Short.)

We met up with Vivian and Arnold after the ceremony. They thanked us, and we them. It truly completed the film for me, being able to share it with the family and to have their blessing to tell their own tragic and uniquely American story.

On Saturday March 8, ICE agents arrested Mahmoud Khalil, a 30-year-old Syrian-born Palestinian activist who holds a U.S. green card and is married to a U.S. citizen who is 8 months pregnant. He is reportedly being held in Louisiana, although he is a legal resident who has not been charged with any crime.

March 9, Brighton Beach swim: Air 39ºF, water 39ºF, 0.26 miles.