Declaration of War George Gittoes on Violence and Community Resilience in White Light
Three gunshots ring out and a woman repeatedly wails, ‘Oh my God,’ piercing a heartbeat-like drum loop. From the outset, filmmaker, photojournalist and artist George Gittoes’ gripping documentary White Light (2019) unsettles. Sixteen-year-old Englewood resident Li’l Dave raps this opening track, produced by Gittoes’ partner and music director Hellen Rose. It follows grainy mobile phone–shot images depicting a terrible procession of bodies bleeding in the street, cartoon hearts obscuring their faces. The song is a siren call expressing raw pain at the staggering cost of gang warfare and police brutality in Chicago’s South Side.
Gittoes spent a year at the epicentre of this swirling violence shooting White Light, which bowed at last year’s Sydney Film Festival. His subjects had the last word on what ended up in the final cut, he says:
I always believe that when you make a film like this, whether it’s in Afghanistan or Pakistan, Iraq or anywhere, you need to show the community the cut. And then if they object to something, you try to persuade them to keep it, and then you’ve got an obligation to get their permission.
The only problem raised was the visibility of the victims’ faces. While the community deemed it important to retain the brutal truth of that footage, they wanted identities obscured to protect grieving families,
