Travis Wilkerson’s Did You Wonder Who Fired the Gun? was one of the must-sees on last year’s festival circuit, presented either as a straight-ahead documentary or through a “live cinema” environment wherein the writer-director presented his footage with an in-person voiceover. In whatever form it’s seen, many — from the Village Voice to the New York Times to Sight & Sound to Artforum to the New Yorker — spoke of it as a titanic experience, inciting chills for its exploration of personal history as a microcosm of national shame.
The theatrical version of Wilkerson’s project will be released next month by Grasshopper Film, and thus there is a trailer to mark the occasion. Overlaying the horrifying history with images of southern life and the ultimate image of decency, Atticus Finch, it gives some taste of the journey endured by its creator.
Watch below:
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.
Did You Wonder Who Fired the Gun? begins its theatrical run on February 28 at Film Forum.