Filmmaker Spike Lee on the Lower Ninth Ward, the BP oil disaster and his latest documentary, If God Is Willing and Da Creek Don’t Rise, due out next month:

“During the 14th Annual American Black Film Festival in Miami Beach last weekend, films weren’t the only features of the festival that set tongues wagging.

On Saturday, June 26, CNN’s Soledad O’Brien and filmmaker Spike Lee had a chat at the Ritz-Carlton Miami Beach Hotel about Lee’s latest HBO documentary, If God Is Willing and Da Creek Don’t Rise. Lee’s latest documentary is the follow-up to his heart wrenching When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts, which was released in 2006. In her introduction of Lee, O’Brien shared that Lee’s 2006 documentary won two Emmy Awards and a Peabody.

“I found that, five years later, people still thought a hurricane caused all of that devastation,” Lee, 53, said about the general public’s view of the disaster in New Orleans, Louisiana. “But, it was the breach of the levees.”

According to Lee, the 40 years that went into building and sustaining the levees that walled New Orleans were spent “cutting corners,” which is what led to the breach and subsequent flood of the city, especially the Lower Ninth Ward.”

via South Florida Times.