BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY: SPIKE LEE, AMERICAN PROVOCATEUR

Born in Atlanta, Georgia, and raised in Brooklyn, New York, Spike Lee (1957–) is one of the United States’ most prolific and provocative auteurs, amassing a filmography of more than 20 narrative features alongside numerous documentary projects, television shows and music videos. After graduating from Atlanta’s Morehouse College in 1979, and establishing his production company 40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks, Lee enrolled in the Graduate Film Program at New York University, where he was classmates with Jim Jarmusch and Ang Lee. As an up-and-coming independent filmmaker in the 1980s, Lee was an integral figure of the “New Black Cinema”. His low-to-mid budget commercial hits of this time such as She’s Gotta Have It (1986) and Do the Right Thing (1989) grappled with the complexities of Black cultural identity, racism, endemic violence and gender dynamics in unapologetically direct, combative and confronting ways. Through a vibrant cinematic language of saturated colours, double-dolly shots, pastiche and fourth-wall-breaking direct address, Lee has developed a practice defined by a “creatively restless experimentation with theme, image, directorial style, camera shots [and] social issues”, all “while not being committed to a particular genre” (Ed Guerrero). This season highlights the wide-ranging scope of Lee’s oeuvre, traversing pressing political, cultural and social issues facing America through some of its most significant historical events of the last 70 years, including the civil rights movement in Malcolm X (1992), the 1963 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in 4 Little Girls (1997) and the aftermath of 9/11 in 25th Hour (2002). Showcasing the breadth of his filmmaking, these celebrated dramas and documentary films are rounded out by two key but lesser-known genre explorations: the musical School Daze (1988) and the crime thriller Summer of Sam (1999).

Wednesday 8 July

7:00pm SCHOOL DAZE

Spike Lee (1988) 121 mins – M

The unexpected critical and commercial success of Lee’s low budget first feature, She’s Gotta Have It, persuaded Columbia Pictures to put up $6 million for his second. With an entirely Black cast, Lee’s rarely revived film examines heterogenous identities in a Southern all-Black college, styled as a 1940s Technicolor musical. The conflicts, contradictions, politics and class divisions of 1980s Black America are dissected through sharp dialogue and lavish song and dance sequences. Starring Laurence Fishburne and a rich cast of Lee regulars including Giancarlo Esposito, Samuel L. Jackson, Ossie Davis, Bill Nunn and Lee himself.

4K DCP.

9:20pm 25TH HOUR

Spike Lee (2002) 135 mins – MA 15+

In post-9/11 New York, a drug dealer (Edward Norton) moves through his final day of freedom, surface swagger giving way to regret and reckoning. Norton’s typical narcissism is perfectly utilised by Lee, who buttresses him with a stacked ensemble – Philip Seymour Hoffman, Brian Cox, Rosario Dawson, Anna Paquin – helping generate pathos for an unlikeable man through the reactions and empathy of those around him. Lee’s feel for street-level detail, sudden bursts of anger and the raw, unsettled mood of a city whose confidence has been shattered, transforms David Benioff’s occasionally ranting screenplay into a bruised, strangely tender hymn to New York’s endurance.

35mm print courtesy of the National Film and Sound Archive, Australia.

Wednesday 15 July

7:00pm MALCOLM X

Spike Lee (1992) 202 mins – M

Lee’s adaptation of what he considers “one of the most important books”, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, had long been his dream project. Starring Denzel Washington as Malcolm X and Angela Bassett as Betty Shabazz in career-defining performances, this large-scale epic presented an often-demonised figure to a wide audience without compromising on his Black nationalist views, his journey with Islam, or the circumstances of his murder. One of Lee’s best, the film is also a peak for his long-time costume designer Ruth Carter, whose wardrobes effortlessly capture decades of Black American experience.

35mm print courtesy of the National Film and Sound Archive, Australia.

Wednesday 22 July

7:00pm 4 LITTLE GIRLS

Spike Lee (1997) 102 mins – M

Initially intended as a feature drama, Lee’s first documentary had been percolating since 1983 when he wrote to the father of Carol Denise McNair, one of the girls (alongside Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley and Carole Robertson) murdered in the Ku Klux Klan’s 1963 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama. Eventually earning the victims’ families’ trust, Lee decided the story was best told through non-fiction. The resulting chronicle of four young lives cut short is a brilliant and understandably sombre document, supported by a thematically appropriate soundtrack featuring John Coltrane, Joan Baez and Max Roach.

35mm print courtesy of the Academy Film Archive.

8:55pm SUMMER OF SAM

Spike Lee (1999) 142 mins – R 18+

Lee’s take on the infamous “Son of Sam” murders – in which serial killer David Berkowitz went on a 13-month spree in New York City, killing six people and wounding eleven – focuses on the events’ erosion of trust between the residents of a largely Italian-American neighbourhood in the Bronx during the late 1970s. Criticised at the time of release for its profanity and violence, this maximalist crime thriller’s portrait of white America “now seems nuanced, sympathetic, and tragically prophetic” (Jackson Arn). With John Leguizamo, Mira Sorvino, Adrien Brody and Lee himself as a TV reporter.

35mm print courtesy of the National Film and Sound Archive, Australia.