Cinema Experts

"What's the difference between Hollywood characters and my characters? Mine are real."
Lee was born in Atlanta to Bill Lee, a jazz musician and Mary, a school teacher. Lee moved with his family to Brooklyn when he was a small child. The Fort Greene neighborhood is home of Lee's production company, 40 Acres & A Mule Filmworks, and other Lee-owned or related businesses. As a child, his mother nicknamed him "Spike." In Brooklyn, he attended John Dewey High School. Lee enrolled in Morehouse College where he made his first student film, Last Hustle in Brooklyn. He took film courses at Clark Atlanta University and graduated with a B.A. in Mass Communication from Morehouse College. He then enrolled in New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. He graduated in 1982 with a Master of Fine Arts in Film & Television.
Lee's thesis film, Joe's Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads, was the first student film to be showcased in Lincoln Center's New Directors New Films Festival. The film went on to win NYU's prestigious Wasserman Award and a Student Academy Award.
In 1985, Lee began work on his first feature film, She's Gotta Have It. With a budget of $175,000, the film was shot in two weeks. When the film was released in 1986, it grossed over $7,000,000 at the U.S. box office.
She's Gotta Have It would also lead Lee down a second career avenue. After marketing executives from Nike saw and liked the movie, Lee was offered a job directing commercials for Nike. What they had in mind specifically was pairing Lee's character from She's Gotta Have It, the Michael Jordan-loving Mars Blackmon, with Jordan himself as their marketing campaign for the Air Jordan line. Later, Lee would be a central figure in the controversy surrounding the inner-city rash of violence involving Air Jordans. Lee countered that instead of blaming manufacturers of apparel, "deal with the conditions that make a kid put so much importance on a pair of sneakers, a jacket and gold". Lee, through the marketing wing of his production company, has also directed commercials for Converse, Jaguar, Taco Bell and Ben & Jerry's.
Lee's movies have examined race relations, the role of media in contemporary life, urban crime and poverty, and political issues. Many of his films include a distinctive use of music. Lee's father is a jazz bassist and is responsible for the music in some of his son's films, including Mo' Better Blues starring Denzel Washington.
In 2007 Lee traveled to Tuscany, Italy to prepare a film about the all-African-American "Buffalo" regiment in World War II, and the German S.S. massacre at Sant'Anna di Stazzema.
Lee's film Do the Right Thing was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay in 1989. His documentary 4 Little Girls was nominated for the Best Feature Documentary Academy Award in 1997.On May 2, 2007, the 50th San Francisco International Film Festival honored Spike Lee with the San Francisco Film Society's Directing Award. Lee received an honorary Doctorate in Fine Arts from Long Island University Brooklyn campus, in Brooklyn, New York, on Thursday, May 10, 2007.