Lee visits SU campus

The second installment of the Chancellor Lecture Series hosted famed writer, director, actor and producer Spike Lee at the F. G. Clark Activity Center Friday night.
Fresh from the Sundance Film Festival with raves reviews from his latest project “Passing Strange,” a musical about a black musician who leaves his middle-class home in Los Angeles in search of “the real.” Lee said he was pleased with the result of his first trip to Sundance.
“We got a very warm reception, which was great. Now we’re looking for a distributor for the film.”
Lee’s next project, in conjunction with ESPN Films and will premiere on May 14, is a documentary on Los Angeles Lakers shooting guard Kobe Bryant.
Before Lee took the stage, different groups on campus treated audiences to artistic expressions.
One of Lee’s most famous scenes from his 1988 musical/drama “School Daze” was recreated by the Southern University Gold ‘N’ Bluez Dancers. Under the direction of Jonas Vanderbilt, assistant program adviser, the Gold ‘N’ Bluez became Jigaboos and Wannabees in “Straight and Nappy.”
Vanderbilt performed alongside Eugere Jackson, who sang “Harlem Blues.”
“I think it’s always good to showcase the talent here at Southern University,” said Vanderbilt. “Despite us not having a dance program, everyone involved is quite talented. It was really good to be on stage, I hardly get a chance to perform and it was good to do it in front of Spike Lee.”
Vanderbilt went on to say preparation by the Gold ‘N’ Bluez, Southern University Dancing Dolls, Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia and other groups took two weeks.
When Lee took the stage, he spent no time diving right into the thick of his speech; not letting anyone deter students from their dreams.
“A majority of the people on this earth go to their graves slaving away at a job they hate,” he started. “When I first started at Morehouse, I was making all Cs. Then the summer between my sophomore and junior year someone gave me a camera and I filmed everything in Brooklyn.”
Lee went on to say he changed his major to mass communications and began taking film classes at Clark University—now Clark Atlanta University.
Lee went on to film school at New York University and with the help of his grandmother, began his professional film career.
“We were so broke in the beginning that we had to recycle cola bottles from the set. We used to get five cents for every bottle and from that we were able to get four more rolls of film.”
Ending his speech with a standing ovation, Lee took questions from the crowd, which ranged from when he would do a follow-up to his Hurricane Katrina documentary to what is next for the black community.
“Now that we have Barack, Michelle, Sasha and Malia in the White House, we can look up to more than rappers, gangsters or athletes.”