FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE THE BEST MOVIES IN OUR VIDEO STORE! Spike Lee - Get On The Bus 

Here comes a film that was obviously shot very quickly and with great passion - which explains its immediate impact! The theme of Spike Lee's Get On The Bus is racism in America. It is very close to the often unspoken problems and who knows, if Spike Lee had had less time and more budget at his disposal, Get On The Bus might have turned out much more detached? The film follows a group of 20 men on their trip to the Million Man March in 1995. Right from the opening credits we learn that 15 men produced Get On The Bus. The money was enough for a hasty production, a kind of guerrilla shoot. Spike Lee introduces us to the individual bus guests. His message: we always identify with our own group and distrust outsiders. In other words, people we perceive as different. But that is what we humans have been equipped with a brain for. To learn what is not necessarily God-given: empathy. There are very different men on the bus. The tour guide (Charles S. Dutton) acts as a kind of referee. The oldest man on board is called Jeremiah (Ossie Davis) and studied black history. Now he can explain to the whites which cultural shrines were invented by blacks. We meet a father and son who have been shackled together by court order. Now they go to March in chains - what irony! Then a gay ex-Marine boards the bus with his lover - and the pair are immediately antagonised by a homophobic _actor. Other passengers: a member of the Nation of Islam (Gabriel Casseus) and a film director who is making a documentary about the trip. The conversations are sometimes philosophical, sometimes funny or sad. The homosexual couple provokes the resentment of the homophobe, because homophobia knows neither black nor white. The Million Man March was not without problems in retrospect, as anti-Semitic messages were also recited. Spike Lee could have left that out, but he doesn't. And the member of the Nation of Islam? The man is silent behind his black glasses. Like the symbol of the religion none of the other passengers want anything to do with. We even see a cameo by Wendell Pierce, who is allowed to blithely spread self-hating clichés about black people. Finally, white police officers stop the bus in Tennessee. With a drug-sniffing dog, they search the vehicle in a blatantly racist manner. The thoughtful faces of the men on the bus reveal that each of them has felt accused by the police at some point. Simply because he is black. What is special about Get On The Bus is that the passengers face one hard truth after another. Always, Spike Lee remains fair. Whites get a chance to empathise with blacks - and vice versa (we remember the pizza baker in Do-The-Right-Thing). There are neither heroes, nor villains, but something much worse: racism. At no point does Spike Lee try to score cheap rhetorical points, instead he shows things as they are. This is a film for the heart!