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Born in Atlanta, Georgia (US) on March 20, 1957, Spike Shelton Jackson “Spike” Lee is an American director, producer, screenwriter and actor. The son of a jazz composer, he grew up in Brooklyn, New York and then studied communications at Morehouse College, Atlanta. There, he made his first works as director: a series of Super-8 films that he also co-prouced. He then enrolled at New York University’s Film School in 1978, where his thesis earned him the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science’s Student Award.
Spike Lee made his first feature film as a director in 1986, with She’s Gotta Have It, a movie that he also wrote, edite, and produced and in which he starred too. This became a trend in his later projects, which came not long after, also due to She’s Gotta Have It‘s success at the Cannes Film Festival. His following films already saw some the director’s trademarks emerge: Spike Lee has always been interested in exploring Black cultural identity in the US, from the satirical School Daze (1988) to the enormous success that was Do The Right Thing (1989), which examines racism in the US.
Among the filmmaker’s most acclaimed later movies are biopic Malcolm X (1992), documentary 4 Little Girls (1997), and later works like 25th Hour (2002), Inside Man (2006), Da 5 Bloods (2020), and BlacKkKlansman (2018), which earned him an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.
Spike Lee is mainly known for his vibrant, colorful visual approach, his genre-defying storytelling that often sees him use satire or break the fourth wall, and the provocative themes he explores, particularly when it comes to exploring Black American life and identity. Spike Lee is a very prolific director; at the time of writing, he has four projects in the works.
