Details Announced for Spike Lee Visit

Filmmaker Spike Lee is slated to speak in Tacoma next month.

“An Evening with Spike Lee” begins at 7:30 p.m. Feb. 28 at the University of Puget Sound’s Memorial Fieldhouse and is sponsored by the school’s Susan Resneck Pierce Lecture in Public Affairs and the Arts series. The announcement reads:

Best known for his controversial films and provocative documentaries, Lee is a master of communication through media as varied as the cinema, television commercials, music videos, books, and the headline-grabbing quotation. He recently published Do the Right Thing, a book based on the 1989 hit film that brought him to national attention. Last August he aired his second documentary about Hurricane Katrina and New Orleans, If God is Willing and da Creek Don’t Rise. This came five years after the television release of When the Levees Broke, a four-hour documentary that won a Peabody Award and three Emmy Awards.

Lee speaks passionately when he sees prejudice or injustice, sometimes leading to friction with public figures, journalists, and other Hollywood actors. His most cutting commentary, however, comes in his films, and, on occasion, from his courtside seat in Madison Square Garden where he expresses his avid advocacy of his beloved New York Knicks professional basketball team.

“I’ve been blessed with the opportunity to express the view of black people who otherwise don’t have access to power and the media,” he wrote in Do the Right Thing. “I have to take advantage of this while I’m still bankable.” With a Google News search turning up 500 mentions of his name in less than two weeks, it seems there’s no danger of that happening anytime soon.

Past Pierce lecturers include the Hon. Cory Booker, mayor of Newark, N.J., political commentator David Brooks, U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky, The New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, playwright Edward Albee, race and religion scholar Cornel West, musician Philip Glass, playwright Suzan-Lori Parks, and dancer and choreographer Twyla Tharp.

What: “An Evening With Spike Lee”
When: February 28, 2011, 7:30 p.m. Tickets go on sale Monday, Jan. 24.
Where: University of Puget Sound Memorial Field House
How much: $15 for the general public; $10 for students with identification. UPS students, faculty and staff are free but must have tickets.

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