American director Spike Lee, 64, will head the jury at the Cannes Film Festival starting today.
to Ute Baumhackl | 6 AM, July 6 2021
The traditional large format festival poster is already hanging on the Palais des Cinemas in Cannes. Palm trees can be seen in the Croisette on it – and Spike Les similarity. The American director is the head of the jury for the film festival that begins today: his second attempt after the 2020 festival has been canceled. This year, mask, distance, vaccination certificate or negative test is mandatory; Other than that, it should be a regular midway festival: with real movie screenings, an opening gala, and a glamorous awards gala on July 17th. The 24 entries in the competition also promise normal operation – with Mia Hansen-Love, Ryosuke Hamaguchi, Apichatpong Werasethakul, Kirill Serebrenico, Wes Anderson, Nani Moretti, François Ozon, Asghar Farhadi Big-caliber world cinema gathers to race for the Palme d’Or.
Weak point: Of the 24 chosen, there are only four outputs. For this, Lee’s nine-person jury is made up of five women – one of whom is the Viennese director. Jessica Housener.
With Lee, who has been one of the greatest innovators and social critics of American cinema since “She’s Gotta Have It” and “Do the Right Thing,” an exciting competition is guaranteed: not only cinematically, he takes a stand on racism and discrimination. Formed by the Civil Rights Movement, Lee sees himself as an artist committed to political engagement: von Donald Trump Until recently, he did not even utter his words about the politics of guns and poverty, and is currently one of the most prominent advocates of the Black Lives Matter movement.
Film work is also not neglected. His documentary “David Byrne’s American Utopia” was recently shown in our cinemas, and his feature film “Da 5 Bloods” is streaming on Netflix. The following projects are in Lee’s work for nearly 100 films: A musical (!) about the origin of the sexual enhancer Viagra. Under the title of the work “The Prince of Cats”, he wants to portray a hip-hop version of Shakespeare’s play “Romeo and Juliet”.
