On the Battlefield

The first release by Little Egypt Collective stages a sound recordist reconnecting with the flat fields where once stood Pyramid Courts – the housing projects that formed the heart of the Black community of the Little Egypt region of southern Illinois.

Appearing from under a large and noisy flock of sparrows, a Black man walks around a vacant lot with a boom in his hand. He wears headphones: he’s a sound recordist, and he’s listening—people are speaking to him. They speak from underneath the vacant lot, where a piece of history lies buried. For half a century, this lot was home to rows of social housing, along with a significant chapter of African-American history. The city, which stretches along the Mississippi River and bears the same name as the capital of Egypt (Cairo), stood on the frontlines of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. What is left of it is what is left of most American cities bound to this past: ruins, defunct, ivy-ridden buildings, bankruptcy as an ultimate punishment, one more resurgence of segregation. Amid this shameful silence, On the Battlefield listens carefully, halfway between a field recording and a séance. With the help of the sound recordist, it tunes in to the history that rises up in the murmur of ghosts and in the song that inspired the title of the film, reminding us that behind every vacant lot lies a battlefield.

Jérôme Momcilovic