Last night in Toronto Academy Award winning film producer Spike Lee was presented with the Toronto Black Film Festival Lifetime Achievement Award at the 8th Edition of the Toronto Black Film Festival. Lee’s debut as a director came in 1986 with the film She's Gotta Have It. He has since written and directed award-winning movies like Do the Right Thing, Jungle Fever, and Malcolm X.
Lee's films explored complex and taboo subjects including race relations, colourism in the black community, poverty, and other political conflicts. Born in Atlanta, Georgia in the the late fifties, Lee is the son of two artists. His mother Jacqueline Carrol worked as a literature and arts teacher, and his father William Lee was a jazz composer and musician.
He has won numerous accolades for his work, including an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, a BAFTA Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, two Emmy Awards, two Peabody Awards, a Student Academy Award, and the Cannes Grand Prix. He has also received an Academy Honorary Award, an Honorary BAFTA Award, an Honorary César, and the Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize. Lee is also the first Black Jury President of the Cannes Film Festival.
In addition to his work in film, Lee is also a tenured professor at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, in the Graduate Film Program. Previously he taught a film making course at Harvard.
During the award ceremony, TBFF screened a revised, blu-ray version of Lee’s 2000 film Bamboozled. Starring Jada Pinkett-Smith and Damon Wayans, Bamboozled focuses on the deep-seated racism in North America. Tackling topics such as racial profiling, blackface, and hate crimes, Lee said “This movie is just as relevant in 2020 as it was when I made it 20-years-ago.”
The Toronto Black Film Festival is running from February 12th to 17th and will feature 75 films from 20 different countries, a conversation with the NFL's Malcolm Jenkins, industry panels, and Q&A sessions.
Written By: Devon Clare Banfield
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