Montreal Black Film Festival 2018 – It was a full house at the Imperial Theatre last Wednesday night (September 26), as award-winning film director Spike Lee made his third appearance at the Montreal International Black Film Festival in a special live question and answer session.
Lee, along with Montreal Black Film Festival 2018 founder and director Fabienne Colas, engaged the audience with a discussion about his more than 30 years as a film director, writer, producer and actor, from She’s Gotta Have It to BlackkKlansman, which recently won the Grand Prix at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.
He related how he got interested in movies (his mother started taking him to see movies at the age of 8), when he started to make movies (back in the summer of 1977 while he was in college and had no job that summer; he found a box containing a super 8 movie camera and film at a friend’s house and started shooting raw footage of New York City during that hot, explosive summer), and some behind-the-scenes stories of some of his films (including how he accepted to direct BlackkKlansman, which was based on a six-word pitch given to him by Jordan Peele, who wrote the screenplay).
Lee also gave some concrete advice on what it takes to succeed in the entertainment industry: You can’t let people determine what you want to do, he said. It’s hard to make a horrible film, let alone a good film. There is no such thing as an overnight success; you have to put the work in.
