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Did You Wonder Who Fired the Gun?

Directed by Travis Wilkerson

United States • 2018 • 90 mins. • In English

Showtimes & Past Screenings

“An audacious meditation on conscience and responsibility, on race in the American South, as well as a highly personal exhumation of family secrets that may include a double murder. Wilkerson begins with a scene from To Kill a Mockingbird, but reminds us that Harper Lee’s story was fiction, ‘whereas mine is true. . . . 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.”—Film Forum.

Filmography: Machine Gun or Typewriter? (2015), Far from Afghanistan (2012), Who Killed Cock Robin? (2005)

Reviews: Cinema Scope, The New Yorker, Artforum, Criterion Daily

Interviews: Little White Lies

Genres: Documentary

Appears in: 41st Portland International Film Festival, PIFF 41: Documentary Views

The Northwest Film Center recognizes and honors the Indigenous peoples of this region on whose ancestral lands the museum now stands. These include the Willamette Tumwater, Clackamas, Kathlemet, Molalla, Multnomah and Watlala Chinook Peoples and the Tualatin Kalapuya who today are part of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, and many other Native communities who made their homes along the Columbia River. We also want to recognize that Portland today is a community of many diverse Native peoples who continue to live and work here. We respectfully acknowledge and honor all Indigenous communities—past, present, future—and are grateful for their ongoing and vibrant presence.