Final PresentationOn Director, Writer and Actor

Spike LeeBY Mills

Background and Early Life

• Spike Lee (real name is Shelton Jackson Lee)

• Born March 20,1957 in Atlanta Georgia USA

• Spike Lee was the elders son out of four son’s and one daughter

• Spike Lee father Bill Lee was a Jazz musician and his mother was a teacher

Film career

• Spike Lee attended John Dewey High School then enrolled at Morehouse College where he made his first student film, Last Hustle in Brooklyn in (1977)

• Spike Lee then enrolled in New York University’s Tisch School of the Art. He graduated in 1978 with a Master of Fine Arts in Film & Television

Film Career

• Spike Lee Production Company 40 Acres & A Mule filmworks, has produced over 35 films since 1983

• In 1985, Lee began work on his first feature film, ‘She Gotta Have it’. With the budget of $175,000, when the film was released in 1986, it grossed over $7,000,000

Awards,Honors and Nominations

• Lee’s film ‘Do the right thing’ was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original screenplay in 1989

• His documentary 4 little Girls was nominated for the best feature documentary academy award in 1997

Trademarks

• There is a commonly a sequence using a ‘floating effect, when a character seems to glide in the air like a ghost instead of walking to make it look like they are in a world of their own

• A number of actors have appeared in numerous of spike Lee productions like his sister joie Lee, Ray Allen, Travis Best, Rick Fox and he also uses real life family’s in his films

• Lee always state race relation in his films

Race Relationin the film Malcolm X

• This film is not only an interesting case study but a significant part of an ongoing cultural discourse that is as relevant now as when Malcolm X lived.

• It aids the viewer in understanding the social discourse surrounding a mediated racist ideology and the ongoing cultural work of social equality in the united states.

• Lee films are an instrument of media politics, controversy and commercialization