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 Director Spike Lee has created one of his most important works in "When The Levees Broke: A Requiem In Four Acts"
This natural catastrophe was made far worse by a series of cascading government ineptitudes by everyone from the local leaders to the national government. As a result, people died and thousands were made homeless. Days after the cataclysm, Spike contacted HBO's Sheila Nevins--who had financed his previous doc, "4 Little Girls," and said he wanted to make some kind of record of what was going on down there.
So three months after Katrina struck, Lee, cameraman Cliff Charles, and a small crew made the first of eight trips to New Orleans to do interviews and shoot footage. New Orleans was in turmoil and Spike--who has made a career of applying his vision to socio-political critiques of America through such films as "Malcolm X," "Do The Right Thing," "Summer of Sam," and "25th Hour" among others--found rich material, a wide range of subjects and various opinions to choose from for not just a two-hour film but a four-hour documentary mini-series. Originally broadcast on HBO in fall 2006, this epic film has now been released as a sumptuous DVD.
 Spike Lee and HBO teamed up to create the powerful documentary, which originally aired a year after Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans  Spike Lee at the 63rd International Venice Film Festival, where the film was the recipient of the Venice Horizons Documentary Award.  The filmmakers had hundreds of hours of footage to choose from, as well as countless still photographs  Images of nature's destructive power are plentiful in the film.  Spike Lee discusses the film at a press conference
Q: Now that the film is out on DVD--was it interesting to go through it again with the goal of compiling a DVD?
SL: Yes, because I had to go through all the footage again and put it together. And I said, man, this is good stuff. I forgot.
Q: With all the extra footage, how did you choose what to put on the extra DVD? SL: Well, it's the same thinking that applied to the first four hours. We wanted to take the best material, and shape it. Give it a narrative. Tell a story. So, the release of the DVD is a three-disk and there are the extras… One of the extra things is Act Five, which is an additional hour and 45 minutes of footage that was not in the original four hours.
Q: What was in Act Five?
SL: Good stuff. The only reason why it wasn't included was because we couldn't get any more time. [The version broadcast on] HBO went from two to four hours. So that was like the limit. They [usually] don't allocate that much time for a documentary in their schedule.
Q: Was Act Five more in depth as to what actually took place?
SL: No, I think we covered that. There were other aspects covered. We got the reason why in the first four hours.
Q: Are there plans to come back to New Orleans and show what has happened to some of these people, like the young man who was walking to Algiers and got shot?
SL: With the addition of Act Five it's now six hours and still incomplete. So, we'll want to stay with it.
Q: You have six hours but do you want to do even more?
SL: Well, what I'm saying is that the film is incomplete because what's happened down there is incomplete. So I would like to stay with this--maybe come back in another year or so--and try to do another look at it. Post-Katrina--two, three years looking back. How much has changed, or not changed.
You don't know what's going to happen. It will be interesting to see where people are in two or three years. Whatever happened to Phyllis? She's in a FEMA trailer. Will she be in a FEMA trailer two or three years from now? How many people are going to move back from 46 other states? And what are they moving back to?
Q: What was the toughest thing in structuring the overall film?
SL: We didn't have a script so we had to find structure. I had a great editor. Supervising editor and co-producer Sam Pollard. He went through hundreds and hundreds of hours of footage not only of the interviews I conducted, but the archival footage, the newsreel footage, and the footage we got from citizens of New Orleans who shot things on their own cameras.
Q: In making documentaries, does this energy change the kind of features you want to do? Or are they two parallel things you do?
SL: I don't try to put any distinctions or parameters whether, like someone asked me before, do I wear a different hat when I do documentary films compared to narrative films--and the answer is no.
Q: Do you think over the years you have changed as a filmmaker? It seems through the press that they are rediscovering you with the success of "Inside Man," and now with the Katrina documentary...
SL: I don't really worry about that stuff. If I worried about that stuff then we wouldn't have been able to do the films that we've done. We've done 20 films in 20 years so I've been too busy to worry about that stuff.
Q: But have you changed?
SL: Yeah, I hope so.
Q: How do you feel the racial climate has changed since 20 years ago?
SL: It's basically the same.
Q: When you make a film like this do you find yourself revisiting some of the people afterwards or keeping in touch?
SL: Yeah, I'm in touch with a lot of people.
Q: And what have you found out?
SL: They're still struggling. It's still a daily struggle.
Q: You've interviewed New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin. What is he trying to put into place to help make things better?
SL: Well, whatever it is, it's not working.
Q: So he is trying to do something but it is not working.
SL: Whatever he is doing is not working. Whatever [the Governor of New Orleans Kathleen] Blanco's doing is not working. Whatever Bush and the federal administration is doing is not working. All this money that's been promised has not reached into the people's hands. So we are stuck somewhere.
Q: Is there hope that the results of the mid-term elections might make a difference?
SL: I hope so.
Q: There are a few films that are being filmed down there; that could bring in money. Would that help?
SL: Yeah, but that's not that's not going to get into the regular folks. You have the fact that "Deja Vu" was shot in New Orleans, but did not impact the pocketbook of Phyllis LeBlanc.
Q: How much money did you personally give to Katrina relief funds?
SL: Me? I'll have to check my tax records for that.
Q: In doing a film like this were you like a teacher?
SL: Well, people told us that they found out stuff they did not know. That for four hours I hope they find that there is stuff in there that they did not know. If you have four hours of stuff that everybody knows then something is wrong.
Q: Obviously people thought you knew what you were talking about because otherwise they wouldn't have let you do four hours.
SL: Yes. HBO was great, it was wonderful.
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