OPENING NIGHT (APRIL 15) POST-SCREENING DISCUSSION WITH:

• Elmer Dixon, Co-founder of the Seattle Chapter of the Black Panther Party
• Kelly O’Brien, Race & Social Justice Initiative, Office of Civil Rights

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 Lee’s 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 filmmaker’s 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 America’s past and present through the prism of family, patriarchy, white supremacy and black resistance.” – Manohla Dargis, The New York Times

“It’s 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 Wilkerson’s filmmaking.” – Bilge Ebiri, The Village Voice

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