Four little girls
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Four little girls |
| Original title | 4 little girls |
| Country of production | United States |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 1997 |
| length | 102 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Spike Lee |
| script | Spike Lee |
| production | Spike Lee |
| music | Terence Blanchard |
| camera | Ellen Kuras |
| cut | Samuel Pollard |
| occupation | |
Four Little Girls is an American documentary film from 1997. Spike Lee , who left the genre of feature films for the first time, was directed, written and produced by Spike Lee . The film revolves around the September 15, 1963 bombing of a Baptist church in Birmingham , Alabama , in which four girls between the ages of 11 and 14 were killed.
action
In his film, Spike Lee deals with the consequences of the attack and lets the family members and friends of the four girls who were killed have their say. Neighbors, members of the Baptist church, and some teachers also share their memories with the girls who were killed. Lee also interviews television journalist Walter Cronkite and civil rights activist Jesse Jackson on civil rights, racial hatred and integration. It shows old and more recent interviews with George Wallace , who as an old man tries to justify his racist attitudes. The director fades in archive material from civil rights activists Martin Luther King and Ralph Abernathy , politician Eugene "Bull" Connor and singer Mahalia Jackson .
background
On September 15, 1963, a bomb exploded during the morning service at 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. The attack, for which Robert Chambliss, a member of the Ku Klux clane , was charged and initially acquitted, left four people dead and 23 injured. George Wallace , the then governor, came under massive criticism, he was accused by civil rights activists of being complicit in the attack. Wallace had said in an interview with the New York Times a few days before the attack that it would take “a few first-class funerals ”. The investigation and processing of the case did not come about until 1970, when Bill Baxley became attorney general for Alabama. Baxley investigated and found that much evidence against Robert Chambliss had been withheld. Chambliss was tried again in 1977 and sentenced to life in prison for murder. Another person involved in the bombing, Bobby Cherry, also received a life sentence in 2002.
music
Terence Blanchard was responsible for the music . As the theme song, Lee chose Birmingham Sunday , written by Richard Fariña in 1964 and sung by Joan Baez , in which Fariña commemorates the catastrophe and her victims by name.
Reviews
Janet Maslin wrote in her New York Times review that the film was "powerful and haunting" and "most remarkable". Maslin praises Spike Lee for his "concise, straightforward documentation style that loses none of its usual clarity and fire."
Awards and nominations
Four Little Girls was nominated for the Black Film Award at the Acapulco Black Film Festival in 1998 and received the Broadcast Film Critics Association Award for " Best Documentary " that same year . At the 1998 Academy Awards , the film was also nominated in the “Documentary” category. The film was also successful at the Satellite Awards 1997 , where it was named “Best Documentary”. In 2017 she was accepted into the National Film Registry .
See also
Web links
- Four little girls in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Four little girls in the lexicon of international films
- Four little girls at Rotten Tomatoes (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Diane McWorther: The Way We Live Now: 7-29-01; Aftershock , New York Times article on July 29, 2001, accessed January 26, 2012.
- ↑ Janet Maslin : 4 Little Girls , New York Times article, July 9, 1997, accessed January 26, 2012.
- ↑ prisma.de: Four little girls