The burden of proof (Tënk)

Louis van Gasteren is the author of an important documentary body of work, celebrated in the Netherlands but little known beyond its borders. In 1966 he made this short film, which prefigures an entire strand of contemporary visual investigation practices. In barely eleven minutes, the film moves in two parts: the first simply captures an activist speaking out against the use of truncheons by the Amsterdam police; the second visually demonstrates this blind police violence. The film’s decisive contribution is to show how, using cinematic tools such as slow motion, looping and reframing, the descriptive power of images can be multiplied tenfold. It heralds a world of omnipresent images in which the means of cinema must support the archive to help it deliver its full truth and political charge. In doing so, it invents a new genre of visual investigation of which Forensic Architecture and Index are the heirs.

Basile Trouillet, experimental filmmaker and editor for Index Investigation

A major film in the history of militant cinema, The Murder of Fred Hampton retains all its revolutionary power and its value as a warning. In its second half, it follows the counter-investigation conducted by the party’s activists and their lawyers to establish the truth about Fred Hampton’s murder. It shows with rare acuity how difficult it is, despite the evidence gathered and the strength of the demonstrations, to push back a mendacious official account. The violence of Fred Hampton’s murder is matched only by that of the authorities’ denial. The film is a reminder that cinema and the world of images can sometimes rise to meet the present and offer an essential counterpoint to dominant narratives. At the end of this counter-investigation, no police officer was convicted; but the film allows us to measure today the injustice of placing the burden of proof on the families and friends of victims of state violence.

Basile Trouillet, experimental filmmaker and editor for Index Investigation

Viewed tens of millions of times and endlessly commented on, the video of the shot that killed Nahel Merzouk in Nanterre on 27 June 2023 holds a special place among images of police violence in France. A year after the events, Index published a video investigation into the precise circumstances of this homicide. The analysis places the viral video among other images of the scene, including urban CCTV footage made public for the first time on this occasion. Every available visual and audio element is checked against the judicial case file, which Index obtained, in order to establish a factual account of an event that remains at the heart of a fierce societal debate.

3D modelling makes it possible to step outside the frame of the images and access an off-screen space that until then existed only in the police account. This video investigation was added to the judicial case file. Three years after the events, French justice has still not determined whether what can be seen in these images amounts to murder.

In 2019, Forensic Architecture carried out a relentless investigation into the killing of Harith Augustus, shot dead by Chicago police. Bill Morrison, a major figure of found-footage cinema who is used to working with old sources, chose to return to the case in 2023. There is no argued demonstration here: the film essentially sticks to synchronising the different sources and letting the images unfold over time. Through split-screen, it makes the police account, the witnesses’ anger and the first stirrings of protest coexist on screen. Surveillance videos and body cameras become so many narrators of a story told in several voices. It is by respecting real time that the film lays bare the fabrication of lies at the heart of the officers’ account. The very simplicity of this treatment makes the image damning and acts as a plea for the imperative confrontation of police statements with the available images and evidence.

Basile Trouillet, experimental filmmaker and editor for Index Investigation