Lee’s latest film highlights role of black soldiers in WWII

ROME — Filmmaker Spike Lee announced plans last Tuesday to work on a movie about the struggle against Nazi occupiers in Italy during World War II. The director hopes the film will highlight the contributions of black American soldiers who fought and died to liberate Europe.

The film will spotlight the courage of black soldiers who, despite suffering discrimination back home, offered a contribution that has so far gone largely unnoticed in other Hollywood movies, Lee said at a presentation of the project in Rome.

“We have black people who are fighting for democracy who at the same time are classified as second-class citizens,” he said. “That is why I’d like to do a film to show how these brave black men, despite all the hardship they were going through, still pushed that aside and fought for the greater good.”

Based on the novel “Miracle at St. Anna” by James McBride, the film tells the story of four black American soldiers, all members of the U.S. Army’s all-black 92nd “Buffalo Soldier” Division, who were trapped behind enemy lines in an Italian village in Tuscany in 1944.

Filming is planned in Tuscany, Rome and the United States, where the film begins and ends, Lee said. Shooting is expected to start by the beginning of 2008, according to producer Roberto Cicutto. Cicutto also said the movie will cost $45 million.

“This is a wonderful story and what makes it even more wonderful is that it is based upon true incidents,” Lee said. “If you look at the history of Hollywood, the black soldiers who fought World War II are invisible.”

The film also looks at the relationship between the soldiers and the villagers, some of whom are partisans.

“We had good relationships with the Italian people; they gave us a lot of information,” recalled 82-year-old William Perry who, at 19, was an infantry soldier in the Buffalo Division. “I’m not a hero, the heroes are those buried in the American cemetery in Florence. I hope this movie will put a positive spin on some of our activities here.”

The film, whose working title is also “Miracle at St. Anna,” is based on some true events, including the massacre of more than 500 civilians by SS troops in the village of Sant’Anna di Stazzema in August 1944.

About 300 troops surrounded Sant’Anna, which had been flooded with refugees, ostensibly to hunt for partisans. Instead, they rounded up and shot villagers, while others were herded into basements and enclosed spaces and killed with hand grenades.

(Associated Press)