Spike Lee

Shelton Jackson "Spike" Lee has spent four decades forcing American cinema to reckon with race, class, and identity — on his own terms, with his own money when necessary. His 1989 masterpiece Do the Right Thing remains one of the most important American films ever made, a searing portrait of racial tension in Brooklyn that was so ahead of its time the Academy refused to nominate it for Best Picture, giving the award instead to Driving Miss Daisy.

Born in Atlanta in 1957 and raised in Brooklyn, Lee attended Morehouse College — his father's alma mater — before earning his MFA from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts. His thesis film, Joe's Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads, won a Student Academy Award. His debut feature, She's Gotta Have It, was made for $175,000 and grossed $7 million, launching an independent filmmaking career that would reshape the industry.

Lee's filmography is a map of the Black American experience: from the jazz clubs of Mo' Better Blues to the autobiography of Malcolm X to the true crime horror of BlacKkKlansman, for which he finally won his first competitive Oscar in 2019. Beyond film, he has been a cultural institution — his production company 40 Acres and a Mule has created opportunities for generations of Black filmmakers.