Spike Lee discusses racism at Charlottesville film festival

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. – Director Spike Lee asked the audience at the Virginia Film Festival to observe a moment of silence to remember the Charlottesville woman killed after a car plowed through a group of protesters during a white nationalist rally on Aug. 12.

The Academy Award-winning director spoke about racial issues and the country’s divisive history Saturday at the Paramount Theater in Charlottesville.

Lee presented his documentary “I Can’t Breathe,” about Eric Garner’s 2014 death in police custody. He also showed his 1992 documentary, “4 Little Girls,” which chronicles the 1963 church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama, that killed four black girls and helped spark the civil rights movement.

Lee said in order to move forward, Americans need to accept that the United States “was built upon the genocide of Native Americans and slavery.”