Événement

Did You Wonder Who Fired the Gun?

Thu Mar 15: 7.15pm
Fri Mar 16: 7.15pm
Sat Mar 17: 7.30pm
Sun Mar 18: 4.15pm, 7.15pm

Travis Wilkerson
US
2017
1h 10m

Series - Veracity: New Documentary Cinema

About

Formally audacious and emotionally powerful: a meditation on conscience and responsibility, in the context of a documentary on race in the American South, as well as a highly personal exhumation of family secrets that may include a double murder. Travis Wilkerson begins with a scene from To Kill a Mockingbird, and introduces a secular saint, Atticus Finch, but reminds us that Harper Lees story was fiction, whereas mine is true. He continues: In 1946, my great-grandfather murdered a black man named Bill Spann and got away with it. His movie is a detective story with important roles played by the filmmakers aunt (a Southern secessionist), by a 31-year-old local activist named Rosa Parks, by the rap song Hell You Talmbout by Janelle Monáe, and by the still-resonant words of a Phil Ochs song that memorializes white activist William Moore.

An urgent, often corrosive look at Americas past and present through the prism of family, patriarchy, white supremacy and black resistance. Manohla Dargis, The New York Times

Its hard to experience Did You Wonder Who Fired the Gun? and not get shivers up your spine from fear, from anger, and from the beauty of Wilkersons filmmaking. Bilge Ebiri, The Village Voice

Synopsis courtesy of Film Forum. All images are scenes from Travis Wilkersons Did You Wonder Who Fired the Gun?, courtesy of Grasshopper Film.