There's a movie coming out, a documentary...it seems like something that folks should watch...
From the beginning Spike Lee knew that Hurricane Katrina was a story he had to tell. Watching the first television images of floating bodies and of desperate people, mostly black, stranded on rooftops, he quickly realized he was witnessing a major historical moment. As those moments kept coming, he spent almost a year capturing the hurricane's sorrowful consequences for a four-hour documentary, "When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts," to be shown on HBO this month.
Some folks like Spike Lee's work, some folks maybe not-so-much. Still, the movie seems to focus not on Spike Lee's ideas, it focuses on what the people who were effected have to say. It doesn't seem like the movie came from a script...
This gumbo of a film lingers on the politics of disaster response, the science of levees and storms, the city's Creolized culture, the stories of loss...
As a kind of thank-you to the many residents...the first half of "Levees" will be first shown free on Aug. 16 to 10,000 people at the New Orleans Arena. HBO is to show the first two hours of "Levees" on Aug. 21 at 9 p.m., the last two on Aug. 22 at 9 p.m. It will be shown in its entirety at 8 p.m. on Aug. 29, the anniversary of the hurricane, one of the country's worst natural disasters.
..."Levees" opens with the Louis Armstrong song "Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans?"...
...there's...a University of New Orleans student, who fled Hurricane Katrina...months later...the police found his mother's remains in the kitchen, under a refrigerator. It took two more months for the coroner's office to identify her officially and release the body.
...the funeral of a 5-year-old...swept away when the waters ravaged the Lower Ninth Ward.
...many people...depressed and outraged after...families were evacuated to different places around the country and waited four months for a government trailer.
...Each person was photographed within a frame, intended to convey the idea that each interview is a portrait...
..."I hope that the documentary opens America's eyes to how we continue to struggle here,"...
The New York Times has an article up about the film. I hope that folks can make time to watch it later this month.
"Politics. Ethics. Morals," [Lee] said, when asked what Katrina and in turn "Levees" was really about. "This is about what this country is really going to be."
...this is about what this country is really going to be...
...what this country is really going to be...
...what this country is really going to be...