Do The Right Thing filmmaker Spike Lee received a lengthy standing ovation as he cruised on stage at the BFI Southbank in London to receive the BFI’s Fellowship award Monday evening.
Lee was presented the award by his Inside Man leading man Clive Owen, who described the new yorker as a “true trailblazer” who will go down in history as “one of the most important directors of his generation.”
Accepting the award, Lee thanked his wife, Tonya Lewis Lee, who was in the audience as well as the artists he has collaborated with throughout his career, emphasizing that his decades-long career is the result of intense collaboration.
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“I’ve said it before in many interviews: It’s not just me — there are many, many people, who you don’t see on this stage,” he said. “It takes a team effort. It takes a gang effort.”
Concluding his speech, Lee told the packed audience — which included a mix of enthusiastic film fans and filmmakers like Edgar Wright — that when he’s shooting a movie, he arrives on set each day and he feels a deep connection to his crew members.
“We all love each other, and we love what we’re doing. We all understand that the majority of people on earth work at a job they hate all their life, and we’re able to make a living doing what we love. That’s one of the biggest blessings you can get,” he said.
The evening began with Lee in conversation on stage with British fashion designer Ozwald Boateng. The pair discussed Lee’s career at length, starting with his first student film, a 1977 documentary about life in New York City, to his work on films like Malcolm X, Summer of Sam, and 25th Hour.
Lee told Boateng that he still handwrites each of his scripts because he hates to type, but he only uses purple ink. The filmmaker was also donning a purple suit. Elsewhere during the conversation, Lee introduced clips from his movies and discussed the process of staging scenes and working with actors.
During an introduction for the final scene of his 1992 epic Malcolm X, Lee took a moment to highlight the work of Angela Bassett, who plays Malcolm X’s wife, Betty Shabazz, in the biopic.
“She’s gonna win the Academy Award. You heard it here first. She’s gonna win,” Lee said in reference to Bassett, who is nominated for Best Supporting Actress Oscar this year for her role in Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther sequel Wakanda Forever.
As part of his trip to London, Lee will also visit teams at the BFI National Archive, who have liaised with him on a new 35mm print of Malcolm X, to premiere at the BFI’s inaugural Film on Film Festival taking place at BFI Southbank in June.
As always, Lee also gave his take on a range of political and social issues in contemporary American life, including gun violence, which he said was partly the result of politicians who “pimp themselves to the national rifle association.”
Lee also criticized the rising living costs in his native New York City, which he said is causing what he described as “reverse migration.”
“A lot of Black people are moving back down south, and Puerto Ricans and Dominicans are going back to the islands because they can’t afford the city,” he said.
He added: “New York City without people of color would be a very dull place.”
The Fellowship award is the highest honor bestowed by the BFI and is handed out to celebrate artists who have made “outstanding contributions to moving image culture.”
Previous recipients include Martin Scorsese and Thelma Schoonmaker, Satyajit Ray, Tilda Swinton, David Lean, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, Steve McQueen, Akira Kurosawa, and Orson Welles.
Speaking with Deadline prior to the event, Lee said he decided to accept the award and traveled to London because the BFI is a “great institution” of the cinematic community.
“They love cinema, and their whole goal is to spread the wonder of cinema. Just look at the previous list of honorees. That’s why I’m here,” Lee said.
Lee added that he believes his greatest contribution to cinema is his work as a professor at NYU Graduate film school.
“I love teaching. I’ve been doing it for 30 years. Now I’m a tenured professor. I’m also the artistic director of NYU Film School, which I feel is the best film school on this God’s earth, no disrespect to any other school, especially USC and AFI,” he said.
The filmmaker is currently finishing his EPSN-backed “multi-series documentary” titled The Saga Of Colin Kaepernick, about the American civil rights activist and American football quarterback who has been ostracized by the National Football League since 2016, for taking a knee before matches.
The docuseries was first announced in July 2020 when Kaepernick inked an overall first-look deal with The Walt Disney Company via his Ra Vision Media.
“It’s been over a year,” Lee said of the film’s production. “But there are some bombshells in there. I can tell you that.”
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