UPC: 026359397325, 3 DVD Set

Movie description:

" As the world watched in horror, Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans on August 29, 2005. Like many who watched the unfolding drama on television news, director Spike Lee was shocked not only by the scale of the disaster, but by the slow, inept and disorganized response of the emergency and recovery effort. Lee was moved to document this American tragedy, a morality play witnessed by people all around the world. The result is WHEN THE LEVEES BROKE: A REQUIEM IN FOUR ACTS. Director Spike Lee presents a four-hour, four-part chronicle recounting, through words and images, one of our country's most profound natural disasters. In addition to revisiting the hours leading up to the arrival of Katrina, a Category 5 hurricane, before it hit the coast of Louisiana, When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts tells the personal stories of those who lived to tell about it while exploring the underbelly of a nation where the divide along race and class lines has never been more pronounced. The film is structured in four acts, each dealing with a different aspect of the events that preceded and followed Katrina's catastrophic passage through New Orleans."

With a runtime of over four hours, Spike Lee documentary is the definitive word on Hurricane Katrina. Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans in 2005, causing the levees that had previously kept the city from flooding to burst, which led to death, destruction, and homelessness on an alarming scale. Lee carefully plots the buildup to the hurricane, using many of the key figures in the city--such as mayor Ray Nagin to outline the warnings given to residents. The film then covers the hurricane itself, showing gut-wrenching pictures of dead bodies and people pleading to be saved, before it settles into a lengthy discourse on the government response to the tragedy. The majority of those people are highly critical of the Bush administration for its poor response, attributing this to the fact that the bulk of the residents affected were African-American. A powerful and important piece of filmmaking, WHEN THE LEVEES BROKE is an eye-opening account of a catastrophe that could so easily have been avoided."