Professor Spike Lee '82 (MFA, Kanbar Institute, Graduate Film)/Hon. '98, Artistic Director, Dean's Council, has been announced as the President of the Jury of the 74th Edition of Festival de Cannes, the first first person of the African diaspora to be named President. The festival will be held July 6 to july 17, 2021.
Professor Lee was asked to preside over the Jury in January of 2020, but the festival was postponed due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
“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. You could easily say Cannes changed the trajectory of who I became in world cinema,” he said. “It started way back in 1986 — my first feature film ‘She’s Gotta Have It,’ which won the Prix de la Jeunesse in the Directors’ Fortnight. The next joint was in 1989 — “Do the Right Thing,” an Official Selection in Competition. And I don’t have the time nor space to write about the cinematic explosion that jumped off, still relative to this, 30 years later,” Lee said.