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WHEN THE LEVEES BROKE: A REQUIEM IN FOUR ACTS

By Spike LEE

HBO FILMS - as PROD

unknown - Completed 2006

- Year of production
- 2006
- Genres
- unknown
- Countries
- USA
- Languages
- ENGLISH
- Duration
- 240 mn
- Director(s)
- Spike LEE
- Cast
- Kathleen BLANCO, Ray NAGIN, Kanye WEST
- Producer(s)
- Spike LEE, Sam POLLARD
- Synopsis
- In 2005, Hurricane Katrina shook America to its core and produced a new iconography of disaster. Those dramatic pictures of over one million dispossessed people – almost unthinkable within the comfortable affluence of the United States – were a deep shock to many. No one could overlook the fact that most of the victims were poor and African-American.
  For months afterward, debate raged about how and why Katrina produced the suffering it did, but not until now has the whole story been told. Spike Lee’s When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts is an epic, comprehensive look at the disaster’s causes and effects. Interviewing the scientists, politicians, media figures and ordinary survivors who were swept up in the events, he has produced an encyclopedic, step-by-step chronicle – and one of his most passionate films to date. When the Levees Broke shows not just how the system utterly failed in the face of nature’s onslaught, but also how the people of New Orleans confronted the crisis and fought their way back.
  All the players are here. Governor Kathleen Blanco and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin (who famously challenged federal officials to “Get off your asses”) recall trying to navigate the chaos. New Orleans resident Shelton “Shakespeare” Alexander describes in vivid terms the scene of forty thousand people seeking shelter at the Superdome. Stars Kanye West and Sean Penn remember their moments in the ongoing drama. Instead of speaking, jazz great Wynton Marsalis sings a heartbreaking verse from “St. James Infirmary.”