Spike Lee's Katrina documentary stirs passions in New Orleans

Spike Lee's documentary about the devastation of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina premiered Wednesday evening at the New Orleans Arena before an audience of thousands of victims of the disaster.

The four-hour documentary, When the Levees Broke:A Requiem in Four Acts, is botha heart-rending story and as angry as anything Lee has made in his 20-year career.

Lee, maker ofracially charged films such as Do the Right Thing and Malcolm X, crafts the story of Hurricane Katrina and the flooding that followed without appearing on film.

Instead, he lets the people of New Orleans tell the tale of neglect and abandonment by those who should have been in charge.

Lee conducts interviews with people who lived through the carnage and uses news and documentary footage to show who was affected by this disaster, primarily poor black residents of the less fashionable parts of the city.

"Let the people tell it, the witnesses," Lee told a news conference Wednesday before the premiere. "People are giving testimonial, sharing all the rage and anger. What they're doing is sharing their humanity with us."

One man tells of being forced to abandon his dead mother's body in the city's Superdome, a story that drew tears and audible sobs from the audience at the arena, which stands next door to the Superdome, where thousands of residents were forced to stay for days awaiting rescue.

The man described pinning a note with his phone number on her shroud.

Deliberate destruction?

Lee's camera also follows a man who takes his mother back to her former home for the first time.

Other residents, livid with rage, insist that the city's protective levees were bombed so that the richer white areas and the French Quarter, the big draw for tourists, were spared.

It's a theory that Lee refuses to discount, saying it's plausible that levees were deliberately destroyed.

Leeremained heavily critical of the Hurricane Katrina rescue effort ahead of the premiere of his documentary, which will air on HBO next week.

"The devastation here was not brought on solely by Mother Nature. People in charge were not doing their job," he said at the New Orleans news conference.

He also expressed hope that the documentary would help turn attention back to the city and to its poorest residents, who are still hurting and displaced a year after the tragedy.

"People are still in dire straits, we want to put the focus back here."

As the anniversary of the disaster approaches, broadcast media and the big U.S. networks are planning a flurry of specials that recount what happened after Katrina and look at the state of New Orleans today.

Criticism swirls

The Wednesday night audience gave the film an emotional response, booing when government authorities were on screen and crying at some of the tragic stories.

But on Thursday morning, Lee faced a storm of criticism, sparked by coverage the day before in the New Orleans Times-Picayune, that he had ignored white victims of the flooding.

"The tragic story of black New Orleans trapped in Katrina's path has found a supreme chronicler," wrote the reviewer in the New Orleans newspaper.

"But the flooded-out residents of [predominantly white neighbourhoods] Lakeview or Old Metairie who attend [the premiere] will … wonder: Where am I in this?"

Lee rejected the criticism, telling a reporter who repeated the accusation that: "This is a very diverse film. You must've been sleeping for four hours."

Newsweek called the film the most important of Lee's career. Lee "views the tragedy as a national betrayal rooted in class, not skin colour. To him, what the victimized share most is they had very little to begin with and were left with nothing," it said.

HBO will show When the Levees Broke in two parts next Monday and Tuesday and in its entirety on Aug. 29, the anniversary of Katrina.

The documentaryairs in Canada on the Movie Network and Movie Central. It is also to screen at the Toronto International Film Festival as part of the African Diaspora program.