More proof that this entire multi-culti thing isn't working out:
From Times Online September 30, 2008
Italian war veterans denounce 'insulting' Spike Lee film
Richard Owen, in Rome
Italian partisan organisations are to stage protests tomorrow at the Italian premiere of Spike Lee's film Miracle at St. Anna, which they say is full of lies, and insults the memory of the Italian Resistance during the Second World War.
The controversial film, already released in the United States, will be running in Italian cinemas from Friday. But it is being shown first at Viareggio on the Tuscan coast, close to the village of Sant' Anna di Stazzema in the Apennine hills above, where 560 civilians — including women and children — were murdered in cold blood in August 1944 by Nazi SS troops as they retreated northwards in the face of the Allied advance.
Miracle at St. Anna, which highlights the role of African-American soldiers in the war, suggests that anti-Fascist partisans indirectly caused the atrocity by first taking refuge in the village and then abandoning the villagers to their fate.
It even shows a partisan named Rodolfo collaborating with the Nazis. This runs directly counter to the accepted Italian
version of events, which is that the slaughter was not a reprisal but an unprovoked act of brutality and that the hunt for partisans was a pretext.
It also questions one of the founding
myths of Italy's postwar democracy, which holds that the help the partisans gave to the Allies regained Italy the honour it had lost under Benito Mussolini, the Fascist dictator, by allying itself with Hitler and Nazi Germany.
At a press screening in Rome, James McBride, the black American Second World War veteran who wrote the novel on which Mr Lee's film is based, said: “I am very sorry if I have offended the partisans. I have enormous respect for them. As a black American, I understand what it's like for someone to tell your history, and they are not you."
He added: “But unfortunately, the history of World War II here in Italy is ours as well, and this was the best I could do ... it is after all a work of fiction, not a history book.”
Spike Lee was also unrepentant, saying: “I am not apologising for anything." He told Italians that there was clearly "a lot about your history you have yet to come to grips with ... This film is our interpretation, and I stand behind it.”
Originally Posted by Gingersnap
