Spike Lee's Katrina film will air on HBO

Movie director Spike Lee poses in New York Aug. 7, 2006, next to rolling footage from his latest project, 'When The Levees Broke,' an HBO documentary about the victims of Hurricane Katrina. The film premieres Monday, Aug. 21. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews)

One of the most poignant interviews in the Hurricane Katrina documentary "When the Levees Broke" is given by a man who lost his mother in the aftermath of the storm, filmmaker Spike Lee said Sunday. In the interview, Herbert Freeman recalls his mother's death at New Orleans Convention Center and the moment he had to leave her body there as he and other evacuees were taken out of the city.

"Before he got on a bus - he had a piece of paper, wrote his name, his cell number and her name and placed the paper between her fingers, her body," Lee said on ABC's "This Week."

"How could this happen, in the - supposedly - the wealthiest, mightiest country in the world? Really, that's the question," Lee said.

The four-hour film, divided into four acts, examines the government's response to Katrina. The first two parts debut Monday on HBO and the remaining acts will be shown Tuesday.

Lee's film "Do the Right Thing" was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay in 1989. His documentary "4 Little Girls" was nominated for the Best Feature Documentary Academy Award in 1997.