Renowned
American director Spike Lee will serve as president of the jury at the 2020 Cannes
Film Festival, scheduled to take place May 12 - 23, organizers of the event
have announced.
"Spike Lee's perspective is more valuable than ever,” the festival said in a statement. “Cannes is a natural homeland and a global sounding board for those who (re)awaken minds and question our stances and fixed ideas. Lee's flamboyant personality is sure to shake things up.”
The pioneering
filmmaker, 62, responded that he was “honored to be the first person
of the African diaspora (USA) to be named President of the Cannes Jury and of a
main film festival”. He said he was “shocked, happy, surprised and proud all at
the same time”.
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| Spike Lee (photo: N. Goode, courtesy Cannes Film Festival) |
Lee has directed
and acted in films such as She’s Gotta Have It, Do the Right Thing
and, more recently, BlacKkKlansman - which won the Cannes Grand Prix in
2018, when he returned to the festival after a 22-year absence.
‘To me the
Cannes Film Festival (besides being the most important film festival in the
world - no disrespect to anybody) has had a great impact on my film career,” Lee
stated. “You could easily say Cannes changed the trajectory of who I became in
world cinema.”
He recalled
that his relationship with Cannes “started way back in 1986”, when She's
Gotta Have It (his first feature film) won the Prix de la Jeunesse in the
Director's Fortnight section of the festival. Three years later, Do the Right
Thing was an Official Selection in the Competition category.
“I don't have
the time nor space to write about the cinematic explosion that jumped off,
still relative to this, 30 years later,” said Lee, who in 2018 delivered a furious,
expletive-laden criticism of U.S. President Donald Trump at the festival, following
the screening of BlacKkKlansman - the story of a real-life African American policeman who managed to infiltrate the local Klu Klux Klan in Colorado.
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| Spike Lee on the set of BlacKkKlansman (courtesy of Cannes Film Festival). |
“We have a guy
in the White House … who in a defining moment … was given the chance to say
we’re about love and not hate, and that (expletive deleted) did not denounce
the Klan,” he told journalists then.
The festival’s
directors Pierre Lescure, president, and Thierry Frémaux, general delegate, said Jan. 14 they were delighted to welcome “both the artist and the man”.
Lee, who is
also a screenwriter, editor and producer, has long been popular in Europe and
particularly in France, where he’s praised for bringing the “questions and
contentious issues of the times to contemporary cinema”, as the festival puts
it.
“He’s never
lost sight of the public, setting out to raise their awareness of his causes in
film after film,” the festival directors stated.
Alongside
members of the Cannes Jury, to be announced mid-April, Lee will present the top
Palme d'or prize at the close of the 2020 festival.
He will succeed Mexican
filmmaker Alejandro González Iñárritu, whose jury awarded the Palme d’or to
Korean director Bong Joon-ho's Parasite, which also recently won the
Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film.
Over the past years, the festival has sought to address criticism about its traditional lack of diversity, with regards to both filmmakers from the Global South and women directors. Last year, French actress and director Mati Diop became the first black woman filmmaker to be selected in the Competition category of the festival. Her film Atlantics subsequently won the Grand Prix. - SWAN
Over the past years, the festival has sought to address criticism about its traditional lack of diversity, with regards to both filmmakers from the Global South and women directors. Last year, French actress and director Mati Diop became the first black woman filmmaker to be selected in the Competition category of the festival. Her film Atlantics subsequently won the Grand Prix. - SWAN
Follow SWAN on Twitter: @mckenzie_ale
