Fiona Apple Narrates Anti-ICE Short Film
Fiona Apple continues her relatively busy 2020 by narrating a short film about citizen’s rights when documenting arrests done by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. The clip — which was done in partnership with We Have Rights, Brooklyn Defender Services, and WITNESS — comes along with a new interview in Vulture where Apple talks about the horrors of ICE, the current situation with the postal service, and more.
“ICE agents are fucking scary. I think so many people want to help and they don’t know how,” Apple said in the interview. “They feel like they have no way of helping. But if you’ve got eyes, ears, a notepad, and a pencil, you can help.” And later on: “I can’t believe this is happening. There’s so many awful things going on in this country. You read about places like Belarus and they’re like, ‘They teargassed the crowd and arrested people and disappeared people.’ But that’s the same shit that’s happening here now. It’s going to hell.”
The video also comes with a Spanish version that was narrated by activist Erika Andiola. “We couldn’t find a Spanish speaker for awhile,” Apple noted. “We recorded it, and I tried to reach out to Jennifer Lopez to do it, but we didn’t hear back.” (Lopez, of course, danced to Apple’s “Criminal” in a scene from 2019’s Hustlers.)
Apple is also asked about the election, and she mentions Kanye West’s ongoing presidential campaign: “I’m really scared about this mail thing. That’s fucking nuts to me. Taking mailboxes?! I’m scared about that. I’m scared and appalled at the Republican lawyer trying to help out Kanye. That’s low. I really hate them for how they’re treating him, you know? And how they’re taking advantage of him to try and stay in power. They’re not helping him.”
And she also briefly mentions that her recording set-up is running again: “I was working on something but I can’t talk about it yet.” Her latest album, Fetch The Bolt Cutters, came out in April.
You can watch the anti-ICE short film below and read the whole Vulture interview here.