Spike Lee, Legendary African American Driector

His background

Lee was born in Atlanta, Georgia, the son of Jacqueline Carroll (née Shelton), a teacher of arts and black literature, and William James Edward Lee III, a jazz musician and composer.Lee has three younger siblings, Joie, David, and Cinqué, each of whom has worked in many different positions in Lee’s films. Director Malcolm D. Lee is his cousin. When he was a child, the family moved from Atlanta to Brooklyn, New York. His mother nicknamed him “Spike” during his childhood. He attended John Dewey High School in Brooklyn’s Gravesend neighborhood. Lee enrolled in Morehouse College, a historically black college, where he made his first student film, Last Hustle in Brooklyn. He took film courses at Clark Atlanta University and graduated with a B.A. in mass communication from Morehouse. He did graduate work at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, where he earned a Master of Fine Arts in film and television.

Notable works

• “Do the right thing” 1989
• “He Got Game” 1998
• “Invisible Man” 2006
• “When We Were Kings” 1996
• “BlacKkKlansman” 2018

Awards and Achievements

In 1983, Lee won the Student Academy Award for his film Joe’s Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads. He won awards at the Black Reel Awards for Love and Basketball, the Black Movie Awards for Inside Man, and the Berlin International Film Festival for Get on the Bus. He won BAFTA Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for BlacKkKlansman. Lee was nominated for Academy Awards for Best Original Screenplay for Do the Right Thing and Best Documentary for 4 Little Girls, but did not win either award. In November 2015, he was given the Academy Honorary Award for his contributions to filmmaking.In 2019, he received his first Best Picture and Best Director nominations and went on to win Best Adapted Screenplay for BlacKkKlansman, his first Academy Award. Two of his films have competed for the Palme d’Or award at the Cannes Film Festival, and of the two, BlacKkKlansman won the Grand Prix in 2018. In 2019, Lee’s film She’s Gotta Have It was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Film Registry for being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”.

Personal Style

Lee’s films have examined race relations, colorism in the black community, the role of media in contemporary life, urban crime and poverty, and other political issues. His films are also noted for their unique stylistic elements, including the use of dolly shots to portray the characters “floating” through their surroundings, which he has had his cinematographers repeatedly use in his filmography.[citation needed] Lee’s films are typically referred to as “Spike Lee Joints”. The closing credits always end with the phrases “By Any Means Necessary”, “Ya Dig”, and “Sho Nuff”. His 2013 film, Oldboy, used the traditional “A Spike Lee Film” credit after producers had it re-edited.