Did you wonder who fired the gun? (2017)

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"Did You Wonder Who Fired the Gun? (2017)" begins as a documentary murder mystery, taking place in the small town of Alabama. It followed the journey of Travis Wilkerson, a white filmmaker, who later found out about his family's racist history. In 1946, the great-grandfather of Wilkerson killed a black man. Decades later, Wilkerson travelled to Alabama to find out what happened.

Plot

Did You Wonder Who Fired the Gun? (2017)

This movie focused on the event in 1946, in Dothan, Ala., when a white shopkeeper, S.E. Branch, shot Bill Spann, a black man.

Branch, the ancestor of Wilkerson, was convicted of murder at first grade, but there has never been any prosecution following the conviction. The crime then becomes slowly vanished from people's memory. Or rather, it has been silently and continuously repressed in people's mind. There is just a brief story in the media with some pictures and the murderer's home movies.

The return of Mr Wilkerson to Alabama is to seek the truth behind the death of Bill Spann, and how it was forgotten. His study is characterized by the reminder that Spann's death is hardly special or extraordinary.

Wilkerson also featured Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner and other new victims of racial abuse, including two songs of protest in the soundtrack; "Hell You Talmbout" from Janelle Monáe and "William Moore" from Phil Ochs.

Black Empowerment

Wilkerson doesn't intend for his movie to solve anything, nonetheless, he offers commitment and honesty from a direct relative of a white supremacist. The movie is an antidote to false innocence that causes acts of racism to stay unpunished and even unrecognized.

"Did you wonder who fired the gun? " is at its sharpest and most important as Wilkerson interrogates his personal link to the past to investigate the violent nature of his own kin. It's difficult to hear Wilkerson ask if the very hands that carried him as a child may have been responsible for hate crimes. In the same way, it's sobering to consider how tough it would have been for him to uproot his family, particularly those who are still active in White Supremacist organizations—even in passing, the film does a great job of tracing how love and animosity can coexist among the same individuals. [1]

References