When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts

Director Spike Lee's documentary, WHEN THE LEVEES BROKE: A REQUIEM IN FOUR ACTS, is a harrowing, vivid documentation of the lives of the people affected by Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. Over four hours, the film uses home video footage, news broadcasts, and interviews with regular people, actors, politicians, and musicians to piece together a living history of the hurricane and the flood caused by inadequate levees and poor government response. There's the man who struggled to get his elderly mom to the Superdome only to watch her die in the heat waiting for buses to arrive. There's the mother who must bury her little girl. There's the police chief, so overwhelmed with his own grief and fear about the safety of his own daughter, who tells people that babies are being raped in the Superdome. Because this is a Spike Lee joint, this documentary is also incendiary, sharing the theories of the city's largely African-American population that the government destroyed the levees in the poor black neighborhood of the Lower Ninth Ward to save richer neighborhoods. It also shares the city's rich African-American history and explains how traumatic it is for African Americans to be torn from their home after generations of their families were ripped apart by slavery.