T Y This is appreciated. And I'm glad Spike Lee has put viewers in contact with the horrible Katrina imagery. (I stowed my TV in storage 4 years ago to cut down on the idiocy in my life, so I missed footage of the disaster). But my rental place only had the first and the last dvds in the series. I missed the central 2 hours! But that oversight, sadly, has pointed out the shows problem; extrapolating from the two DVDs I saw, I feel pretty confident that I could guess the general tone, format and points of the missing DVD. It's not a very focused or structured series. I don't feel like I missed anything specific.Lee chose to roll footage of the debris and inundation, which is fine. But I wish someone else (Frontline) would do an expose on who's to blame. Like everyone else, I blame the incompetent Bush and Co. as the main culprits. But Lee keeps blame (and thus any solution) very vague. He really seems to be letting Nagin off the hook here. Even after black homeless refugees cite Nagin as a problem. For any of the Sean Penn haters, Penn was there putting himself out and helping people in danger - What were you doing?

paul2001sw-1 In some respects, New Orleans, a city built eight feet below sea level in the hear of hurricane country, is a natural disaster waiting to happen. But you might think, given its location in the richest country in the world, that there would at least be top-class flood defences, a solid evacuation plan and a firm commitment to rebuild. But in America, the politics of class and race are never far away, and New Orleans is poor and black. Director Spike Lee has done a real service for his country by making this film which exposes the shocking story of hurricane Katrina, a superficially simple assembly of documentary footage and the sometimes contradictory but always diverting testament of literally dozens of people, some famous but most not, caught up in the disaster. It's hard to pick out the most terrible revelations: but starving victims were prevented at gunpoint from entering neighbouring counties, and the school system has all but collapsed in the aftermath of the disaster because of the decline in the city's tax base: these are things that just shouldn't happen in a supposedly rich and civilised country, and are accidents (if that word is not too kindly) of man, not of nature. The truth is stark and powerful: Katrina did more damage than those planes on 9/11, but its attack was not aimed (especially) at the rich and powerful; the different responses serve a dreadful indictment of the state of the American dream.

nannorth2005 I borrowed this DVD from the Library and watched it all in one evening. Very moving and extremely well done.However, there is one complaint I have, or perhaps because I did watch it all in 6 hours straight, I missed this.Spike Lee shows some footage of the RCMP in dress uniform (obviously not taken in New Orleans at that time, but from some performance footage from elsewhere) and mentions only in passing about offers from other countries to help with the rescue/recovery programs.My first comment is that he neglects to mention that Fidel Castro in Cuba had 1600 doctors ready to go, but Cuba received no response from the White House to this offer.My second comments is that he neglects to honor those people - groups and individuals who traveled to New Orleans to do search and rescue for people and for animals. In such a dismal and sad commentary on the slow reaction of the United States Government and its affiliated organizations to this tragedy, nothing is said of the thousands of individuals and groups who contributed money and time - surely the only bright light in this terrible situation. And surely showing that there still is hope for humanity when compassionate and caring people (Americans, Canadians and persons from other countries as well) traveled thousands of miles to help complete strangers.Recognizing these wonderful acts of kindness and compassion would not have taken away from the tone of the film, but would rather have added to it as a contrast to what the official line was.I think Spike Lee produced a wonderful documentary. But I also think he missed an opportunity to show that there is still incredible goodness in the people of the United States and those from other countries who contributed to the search and rescue and recovery programs.

Lee Eisenberg I was with my host family in St. Petersburg, Russia, when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. As we watched it on the news, I was absolutely ashamed. Even if I couldn't understand every word, I could see what it looked like, and I didn't know how to explain to my host family the fact that my government abandoned the people of New Orleans.Well, even just seeing it on TV and reading about it through e-mails and over the Internet didn't prepare me for what I saw in Spike Lee's documentary "When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts". When I saw just what everything looked like, I was horrified. Aside from the fact that the Crescent City will probably never be the same, the documentary makes clear that this was another example of those in charge screwing the people (certainly that looked like the case during the 1927 flood).Any logical-minded person would have to agree that George W. Bush playing the guitar while New Orleans drowned was the same sort of thing as Nero playing his fiddle while Rome burned, or Marie Antoinette saying "Let them eat cake.": it was the ultimate display of not caring. But the New Orleanians interviewed weren't neutral: that one boy was very clear about what the city needed.I liked how Spike Lee interviewed various figures (Ray Nagin, Kathleen Blanco, etc.) to get their opinions on what what went wrong, even if they sometimes blamed each other. Of course, the biggest blame lies with the Bush administration for its racism, inaction, and starving of government programs (never mind that he'd sent the National Guard to Iraq to fight his vile war). As Rev. Al Sharpton put it, we're supposed to be spreading democracy to Iraq while the people here got nothing.All in all, this just might be Spike Lee's best work ever. It just goes to show what the US government had degenerated into. For the record, Harry Belafonte mentioned how Venezuela's Hugo Chavez had offered New Orleans help; I remember while I was in St. Petersburg reading on the Internet that Cuba's government also offered help (the Bush administration didn't respond, natch). Also while I was in St. Petersburg, I read about Bob Denver's death on 2 September 2005; it turned out that that was the same day that Bush commended FEMA head Michael Brown for "doing a heckuva job". So the last thing that Bob Denver got to see before dying was Bush praising incompetence (even if it wasn't specifically Brown's fault).All in all, a great documentary. And I laud Kanye West for reminding everyone that George W. Bush doesn't care about black people.