The Bite Magazine - Spring/Summer 2023 - Issue 33

He’sGot It Giedre Jackyte celebrates award-winning director Spike Lee who received a BFI Fellowship at BFI Southbank in London. bitefilmawards Director Spotlight S pike L ee F ollowing a career spanning over three decades, American filmmaker and actor Spike Lee was presented with the prestig- ious BFI Fellowship at BFI Southbank in February by actor and the star of his film In- side Man, Clive Owen. Lee is respected among the world’s greatest directors, writers, actors, producers, and authors. A graduate of More- house College and New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, he is a tenured Professor of Film and Artistic Director. The event, hosted by BFI Chair Tim Richards and BFI Chief Executive Ben Robert, followed an in-depth onstage conversation with fashion designer Ozwald Boating. Actors congratulated Lee, including Samuel L. Jackson, who starred in his films School Daze in 1988, Do The Right Thing in 1989, Mo’ Better Blues in 1990 and Jun- gle Fever in 1991. Edward Norton played Mon- ty Brogan in the 2002 drama film 25th Hour, and Halle Berry also starred in Jungle Fever as a girl hooked on crack and Girl 6 as herself. DeWanda Wise played the lead in the Netflix comedy-drama series adaptation of Spike Lee’s 1986 film, She’s Gotta Have It , from 2017 to 2019. It’s interesting to see the director playing a character in all of his movies; it’s almost like Stan Lee doing cameos in the Marvel films, but Lee has a more extended stint. Longtime col- laborators, cinematographer Ernest R. Dicker- son, costume designer Ruth E. Carter, and film- makers Edgar Wright and Asia Kapadia joined the celebrations. The Academy Award-winning director praised for his virtuosic and culture-changing career joins an eminent list of BFI Fellows, includ- ing fellow past and present directors Martin Scorsese, Satyajit Ray, Sir David Lean, Sir Ste- ve McQueen, Sir Ridley Scott, Nicolas Roeg, Orson Welles, Ousmane Sembène, Bernardo Bertolucci and Souleymane Cissé. Actress Til- da Swinton, film editor Thelma Schoonmaker, filmmaker Michael Powell and screenwriters Emeric Pressburger and Akira Kurosawa have also received the honours. SPIKE LEE BFI FELLOWSHIP