Spike Lee

Spike Lee’s short film, ‘Joe’s Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads’ (1983), received a Student Academy Award and was the first student film featured at Lincoln Center’s New Directors New Films Festival, following his MFA in film and television from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts in 1982. His career significantly advanced with his 1986 feature film debut, ‘She’s Gotta Have It,’ a comedy produced for $175,000 that grossed an impressive $7 million. This success led him to establish his influential production company, 40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks, in 1986. He continued to direct acclaimed films including ‘School Daze’ (1988) and the seminal ‘Do the Right Thing’ (1989), which earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay for its depiction of racial tensions.

Lee further cemented his reputation with the jazz biopic ‘Mo’ Better Blues’ (1990) and the widely praised biographical drama ‘Malcolm X’ (1992), starring Denzel Washington, which received an Oscar nomination for Washington. Beginning in 1993, he started teaching at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, later becoming its artistic director in 2002. His prolific output through the 1990s included ‘Crooklyn’ (1994), ‘Clockers’ (1995), ‘Girl 6’ (1996), and ‘Get on the Bus’ (1996), alongside the Oscar-nominated documentary ‘4 Little Girls’ (1997). The 2000s saw him direct ‘Bamboozled’ (2000), ’25th Hour’ (2002), and ‘Inside Man’ (2006), as well as the Emmy-winning documentary ‘When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts’ (2006), which explored Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath.

His sustained excellence has been acknowledged with the National Medal of Arts in 2023, the Ebert Director Award at the TIFF Tribute Awards in 2023, and the Board of Governor’s Award from the American Society of Cinematographers in 2024. Lee is confirmed as the director of the upcoming feature film ‘Highest 2 Lowest’ (2025).