Photo Credit: Abe Van Dyke
On April 30, 2014, Dontre Hamilton, a 31-year-old paranoid schizophrenic man who was sleeping on a bench in Downtown’s Red Arrow Park, was fatally shot 14 times by officer Christopher Manney. While Manney was fired from the Milwaukee Police Department, no charges were filed.
The ensuing frenzy was felt across the City of Milwaukee, with rallies in the streets and national figures from the burgeoning Black Lives Matter movement coming in from across the country to protest.
At the time, Erik Ljung was living just a mile away from the shooting and working as a freelance videographer. Like most Milwaukeeans, he heard about the incident through the media. He was initially shocked by the seemingly excessive amount of shots fired, and the fact that the officer was initially responding to a non-emergency wellness check.
Where most would have limited their outrage to social media hashtags or, at best, an appearance at a march, Ljung’s first instinct was to approach the family directly. “I had been thinking about reaching out to the family for a while, but it’s intimidating,” Ljung said. “What business do I have approaching a family in a situation like this?”
He eventually decided to go down to one of the first rallies held by the Hamiltons and introduce himself. Shortly after meeting the family, Ljung began consistently coming to rallies with his camera, documenting the growing movement for Dontre. This led to a deeper relationship with the Hamilton family, and him interviewing them in their home and traveling with them.
“In the beginning I wasn’t even trying to make a feature-length documentary,” Ljung said. “I just wanted to bear witness, and try and understand more in-depth what was going on on the ground level to learn for myself. It just kind of developed from there and happened naturally. Pretty soon we had 500 hours of footage.”
Those hours were, with the help of editor Michael Vollmann, trimmed to a 90-minute documentary, The Blood Is at the Doorstep, which will be screened as the centerpiece of this year’s Milwaukee Film Festival.
“It’s a huge honor,” Ljung said of the distinction. “I don’t think a Milwaukee-made film has ever been the centerpiece film of the festival, and this is such an important—if I can say that with it being my own film—story to be told here in Milwaukee. It’s very important to put it on the big screen and give the community the opportunity to see what happened in a more nuanced and in-depth way.”
While much of the press coverage around Hamilton’s death revolved around race, in large part due to the upswing in video footage of the deadly interactions unarmed African American men have with police officers, Ljung was originally drawn to the story from a mental health perspective.
“I have a cousin that is diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, the same as Dontre,” he said. “If something like this were to happen to my family we would get the benefit of the doubt.”
These inequities inspired Ljung to give the Hamilton family a platform to tell their story, as well as find the truth in what happened that day. “For me it was very important to let the family speak for themselves,” he said. “I tried to editorialize this as little as possible. We talked to the police chief. We filmed police training. We talked to the police union president. They’re all included in the film. Manney’s voice is included in the film. We didn’t do a sit-down interview with him, but he is included in the film.”
Photo Credit: Joe Brusky
Ljung’s intentions did not mean that there were never times he felt conflicted about the story he was telling. The most impactful day for him while filming was when he filmed Dontre’s mother, Maria Hamilton, at the first group meeting for Mother’s For Justice. The group is comprised of mothers who have lost children to police violence.
“They were talking about such horrific events, but they were all dressed so nice and were having a tea party,” Ljung said. “It was an unexpected scene. I was the only white person in the room when the meeting started. On top of that I was the only man in the room, and I was the only person who didn’t have a child. There were many reasons why I would have no idea what it must be like for them. Just listening to their stories, and the fact that they allowed me to be there and film that, made it one of those days where it was very humbling to be doing this story.”
This moment, which is among the most powerful in the film, was one of the hardest for Ljung to capture. “After filming a scene like that you don’t go home feeling good about yourself,” he continued. “You don’t think, ‘I got this amazing scene.’ It made me question if I’m doing the right thing. Seeing people in that much pain does not make you feel good about sticking a camera in front of their faces. I really had to question my intentions and where we were going with the film.”
These difficult moments eventually forged a bond between Ljung and the Hamilton family that has led them to travel across the nation together. Since the film premiered in March at the South by Southwest festival, they have gone to film festivals including the Human Rights Watch Film Festival in New York City and an ACLU screening in Washington, D.C., to promote the film. “I’ve had the opportunity for them to get to know me on a personal level a little more, instead of me just asking questions behind a camera,” Ljung said.
The Blood Is at the Doorstep will be screened at 7 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 6 and at 11 a.m. on Saturday, Oct. 7 at the Oriental Theatre, and at 8:45 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 10 at the Times Cinema.
