![]() ![]() "Do the Right Thing" (1989), was hailed as a masterpiece immediately upon its release, was a prime contender for the Palme d'Or at that year's Cannes Film Festival, and was predicted to be a major player in that year's Academy Awards. For his next film, Lee swung big, taking a look at one swelteringly hot day on one block in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Bed-Stuy, as tensions between black residents and the white owners of a pizza joint reach a breaking point. His sophomore effort, "School Daze" (1988), was a dark comedy partially inspired by Lee's tenure at Morehouse College, which notably featured the first instance of what would become Lee's visual calling card, the so-called "floating" dolly shot. Critics were wowed by the film, and Lee was instantly pegged as a filmmaker to watch. Shot for a few thousand dollars in sultry black and white, and featuring a narrative device borrowed from Akira Kurosawa's classic "Rashomon" (1950), the film followed three young black men as they compared and contrasted their experiences dating the same woman. In 1986, Lee released his debut feature, "She's Gotta Have It" (1986). That same year, Lee founded his production company, 40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks, a portend of Lee's proclivity for provocation. Lee's thesis film, "Joe's Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads" (1983) caused major waves, becoming the first student film to be showcased in Lincoln Center's prestigious New Directors/New Films Festival, and winning Lee the Student Academy Award. Upon returning to NYC, Lee was accepted into the graduate film program at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, where he earned a Master's degree in film & television. He also took film courses at Clark Atlanta University, and eventually graduated from Morehouse with a B.A. ![]() While at Morehouse, Lee made his first student film, "Last Hustle in Brooklyn" (1977). It was here that his mother nicknamed him "Spike." After attending John Dewey High School in Brooklyn, Lee enrolled in Morehouse College, a historically black university. After spending the first few years of his life in Georgia, Lee and his family moved to Brooklyn, New York, where he would spend his formative years. His mother, Jacqueline Carroll, was a professor of arts and black literature, while his father, William James Edward Lee III, was a jazz musician and composer, so it is perhaps no coincidence that Lee and all of his younger siblings would end up pursuing careers in the arts and taking part in his feature films: his brothers, David and Cinqué, grew up to become a photographer and an actor/filmmaker, respectively, while his sister, Joie, became a screenwriter, producer, and actress. ![]() Born Shelton Jackson Lee on Main Atlanta, GA, Lee was raised in an artistically inclined, Afro-centric family. ![]() Love him or hate him, Lee proved time and time again that you simply cannot discount him. Over a three decade-plus career, Lee's films, or "joints" as he often called them, were brazen cherry bombs aimed at mainstream society, tackling such thorny issues as racism, crime, poverty, media manipulation, and religion with style, grit, and urgency. Spike Lee was an American director, writer, producer, and actor became the pre-eminent chronicler of black life in America through the lens of independent film throughout the late 20th century and early 21st century. ![]()
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