Lee, Spike (Shelton Jackson Lee),
1957–, African-American filmmaker, b. Atlanta, Ga. As a student at
New York Univ., he won recognition with his graduation film, Joe's
Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads (1982). His films usually
celebrate the richness of African-American culture and address such societal
problems as racism, sexism, and narcotics addiction. She's Gotta
Have It (1986), mainly about sexual relations and attitudes,
established Lee as a commercially viable director. Lee later updated and
sharpened the film as a television miniseries (2017). His Do the
Right Thing (1989) presented the complexities and tensions
behind interracial relations.
Some of his subsequent films have been controversial—Jungle Fever (1991),
an exploration of interracial relations and attitudes; Malcolm
X (1992), based on the life of the African-American leader;
Clockers (1995), a violent portrait of life at the
lowest reaches of the drug underworld; Girl 6 (1996), a
high-spirited portrayal of a young woman in the phone sex business; and
The Original Kings of Comedy (2000), a series of
racially charged stand-up routines by four contemporary African-American
comedians. He broke with his traditional style and subject matter to make
Inside Man (2006), a polished heist movie.
Lee first turned to documentary with 4 Little Girls (1996), a study of the fatal
1963 bombing of a black church in Alabama. When the Levees
Broke (2006) documented Hurricane Katrina and its harrowing
aftermath in New Orleans; If God Is Willing and da Creek Don't
Rise (2010) was its sequel. His Oldboy (2013),
a revenge story about a man kidnapped for 20 years then freed, is a remake
of a 2003 South Korean film. Lee changed cinematic course again with
Da Sweet Blood of Jesus (2015), a vampire tale set in
Brooklyn and Martha's Vineyard and based on a 1973 Bill Gunn film. The
musical film Chi-Raq (2015), based on Aristophanes'
Lysistrata, is set amid gang violence in Chicago. Lee
returned to racial themes with his BlacKkKlansman (2018),
an account of an African-American policeman who infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan in the 1970s. Lee's film
(2018) of Antoinette Nwandu's play Pass Over, in which two
homeless men puzzle over the death of black men, and Da 5
Bloods (2020), which tells of African-American Vietnam vets who
return to search for their leader's remains and for gold bars they buried
during the war, were released for online streaming.
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