Adventures in Moviegoing

Spike Lee

Always bold, subversive, and razor-sharp, auteur and cultural icon Spike Lee sees the complexities of life in America with a clarity like no other. In this edition of Adventures in Moviegoing, he sits down with Sheril Antonio, his colleague at New York University Tisch School of the Arts, to discuss his formative cinematic experiences—from growing up watching James Bond movies with his mother to the impressions that pioneering Black performers like Sidney Poitier, Jim Brown, and Melvin Van Peebles made on him. The films he has chosen to present, like ROME OPEN CITY, THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS, and SWEET SWEETBACK’S BAADASSSSS SONG, crackle with the defiantly independent spirit that runs through his own work.