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Spike Lee Four Little Girls

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Spike Lee Four Little Girls
Film analysis of Four Little Girls
Q1. What is the title of the film you picked?
The name of the documentary is Four Little Girls, as directed by Spike Lee.
Q2. Why did you pick this film over the others offered?
I enjoy the films of Spike Lee but had never seen one of his documentaries.
Q3. What is/are the central message(s) of this documentary/fictional film? Be specific. Use examples from the film to support your choice.
Lee profiles one of the most notorious hate crimes of the 1960s: the bombing of a black church in Birmingham Alabama, which resulted in the murder of four little girls attending choir practice in the church. Lee uses this incident to profile Southern racism and to bring to light an incident which is not remembered nearly …show more content…
Consider the effectiveness of the film for this history class. What are the strengths and weaknesses of this film in documenting history?
Lee interviews a wide range of subjects for his documentary, including the parents of the little girls as well as the white police officers in charge of investigating the crime. There is little in the way of documentary footage of the incident, but Lee tries to make up for this fact by using still photographs from the era.
Q5. How do you think the filmmakers want the audience to respond? Is there a social justice message? If so, what is it?
Lee wants the viewer to respond with shock and horror to this evidence of the legacy of racism in American society. He shows how racism ran so deep in the South that even children became causalities of the efforts to integrate.
Q6. Did the documentary leave you with any unanswered questions? If so, what were they?
Lee’s documentary is very comprehensive, encompassing both the small details of the girls’ lives as well as how the bombing related to the larger struggles of the American Civil Rights movement. The only area which receives less attention is the state of race relations in Alabama today, other than an interview with former segregationist governor George
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