SPIKE LEE January 30, 2014
Spike Lee was born Shelton Jackson Lee on March 20, 1957, in Atlanta, Georgia. He was making amateur films at age 20, and won a Student Academy for his graduate thesis film. His first student film, Last Hustle in Brooklyn, was completed
when he was an undergraduate at Morehouse College. Lee went on to
graduate from the New York University Film School in 1982.Lee became a director of promise with his first feature film, She's Gotta Have It,
in 1986. The film was shot in two weeks and cost $175,000 to make, but
grossed more than $7 million at the box office, making it one of the
most profitable films made in 1986.
In 2006, Lee directed and produced a four-hour documentary for television, When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts,
about life in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. He
also did well at the box office that year with the crime caper Inside Man starring Clive Owen, Jodie Foster and Denzel Washington.His most recent feature film release, Miracle at St. Anna (2008),
tells the story of four African-American soldiers trapped in an Italian
village during World War II. This movie was praised for bringing the
often overlooked experience of black infantrymen -- known as buffalo
soldiers -- to the big screen.
