Film Series

Spike Lee Film Series

From: Thursday, January 30, 2025 at 8:15 PM • To: Sunday, February 2, 2025 at 9:00 PM

Pop's Art Theater and Griot Arts are proud to announce the Second year of "Through the Black Lens," an annual program centering on Black voices in film for Black History Month. This year's series SPIKE LEE JOINTS centers on the films of independent auteur wunderkind Spike Lee, including:

• MALCOLM X (Jan 30 @ 8:15pm) - 1992. Often misunderstood, Malcolm X was one of the leading forces of the United States’ Civil Rights Movement. He inspired many—and frightened many—but is destined to be remembered as one of the greatest men of his era. This riveting biography directed by Spike Lee and starring Denzel Washington in an Academy Award-nominated performance reveals the man at the center of a storm of change
  TRAILER: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hMpERkER6s
• BAMBOOZLED (Jan 31 @ 6:45pm) — 2000. With this blisteringly funny, unapologetically confrontational satire, writer-director Spike Lee examined the past, present, and future of racism in American popular culture, issuing a daring provocation to creators and consumers alike. Under pressure to help revive his network’s low ratings, television writer Pierre Delacroix (Damon Wayans) hits on an explosively offensive idea: bringing back blackface with The New Millennium Minstrel Show. Bamboozled is a stinging indictment of mass entertainment at the turn of the twenty-first century that looks more damning with each passing year.
  TRAILER: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_6_c2wY_Hs
• CROOKLYN (Feb 1 @ 2:30pm) — Though the title may sound menacing to outsiders, Crooklyn is actually Spike Lee’s most tender and affectionate film. The screenplay was penned by Spike, his brother Cinqué, and their sister Joie, semi-based on her childhood growing up with all brothers, their Jazz musician father (an excellent as always performance from Delroy Lindo), and their no nonsense, loving mother played in a top tier turn by the one and only Alfre Woodard. This film is a love letter to Bed-Stuy in the 70s, childhood summers, and most of all to the Lee’s mother, Jaquelyn.
  TRAILER: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnYl1TfWD-U
• DO THE RIGHT THING (Feb 2 @ 6:45pm) — Set on one block of Brooklyn’s Bed-Stuy Do or Die neighborhood, at the height of summer, this 1989 masterpiece by Spike Lee confirmed him as a writer and filmmaker of peerless vision and passionate social engagement. Over the course of a single day, the easygoing interactions of a cast of unforgettable characters—Da Mayor, Mother Sister, Mister Señor Love Daddy, Tina, Sweet Dick Willie, Buggin Out, Radio Raheem, Sal, Pino, Vito, and Lee’s Mookie among them—give way to heated confrontations as tensions rise along racial fault lines, ultimately exploding into violence. Punctuated by the anthemic refrain of Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power,” Do the Right Thing is a landmark in American cinema, as politically and emotionally charged and as relevant now as when it first hit the big screen.
  TRAILER: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVAD4fYRcvA