Southside With You renews a 27-year-old debate about Do The Right Thing

It's a debate that's been going on for 27 years - why did Mookie throw the garbage bin through the window of Sal's pizzeria in Do The Right Thing?

The debate is gaining new energy with this weekend's release of the film Southside With You.

Southside With You is a fictional account of Barack Obama's first date with future First Lady, Michelle Robinson, in the summer of 1989.

In between visits to an art gallery and a trip for ice cream, the couple takes in a viewing of the controversial film, Do The Right Thing.

Sal's pizzeria is central to the Spike Lee film, and on the hottest day of the summer, tempers rise about the fact that Sal only has pictures of famous Italians on his walls, despite the fact that most of his customers are black:

After Radio Raheem dies at the hands of the NYPD, Mookie then takes things into his own hands:

After seeing the film, Obama tells a white colleague that Mookie threw the garbage bin in an attempt to save Sal's life, but later says to Michelle that the real reason Mookie threw the bin was because he was angry.

Jesse Wente is Director of Film Programmes at TIFF Bell Lightbox, and tells Day 6 host Brent Bambury that  the film, and the surrounding debate, are just as poignant as ever.

When we think of Eric Garner, and when it comes to Radio Raheem, the difference is the phone and the camera, not the violence.

"The film poses the question: what is the appropriate response to that sort of systemic violence, and I don't know if we've come up with the actual answer to that, because we still have systemic violence and I'm not sure any of the responses we've had have necessarily yielded the results," says Wente.

Wente says the killing of Radio Raheem is the central scene in the film, not Mookie throwing the can.

"I think it's clear that the police don't do the right thing in that moment, and I think in the context of that we have to analyze. Mookie's choice is made within that light, he's not in a vacuum in deciding that. He's deciding it in reaction to something," says Wente.

Wente points at that the difference between police violence in 1989 and police violence today is that there were no cellphones to film or take pictures of what was happening on the streets.

"I think what artists like Spike Lee, what he really did was to take a picture of it and to hold it up. And I think that is why that film still means so much."

In 2014, Eric Garner died while being held in a stranglehold by New York police. The video of his death is similar to the scene in which Radio Raheem is killed in Do The Right Thing.

"I think it's important to understand, when we think of Eric Garner, and when it comes to Radio Raheem, the difference is the phone and the camera, not the violence," explains Wente. "So the difference now is awareness."

He says Do The Right Thing occurred at a time when that awareness wasn't possible, except through film.

"Now those movies show, sadly, on the nightly news and on YouTube and on Facebook all too often and we're witness to those sort of crimes now. The challenge is, what are we going to do? We've got the garbage can beside us Brent, what are we going to do now?"