Spike Lee, Race in America, and the Virginia Film Festival in Charlottesville

“Brooklyn is in the house,” laughs Spike Lee from the stage of the Paramount during his conversation with Maurice Wallace, a high point of last weekend’s Virginia Film Festival. The security at the historic theater is something akin to that in airports, producing long lines for avid film lovers. Spike Lee, in an astute bit of festival programming, was invited to show his documentary, I Can’t Breathe, an interview with Ramsey Orta who took the cellphone footage of Eric Garner dying at the hands of Staten Island police, screened in a double bill with his 4 Little Girls (1997). Before making a quick turnaround, flying back to Brooklyn for the premiere of his Netflix series, “She’s Gotta Have It,” based on his movie, Lee announced his next project teaming up with Get Out director Jordan Peele to make Black Clansman, starring John David Washington, Denzel’s son in the title role, and Adam Driver as the white man who portrays him in the clan.

Lee shouted out to Ezra Edelman who made the epic, Oscar-winning O.J.: Made in America last year, screening at the festival too. The O. J. story provides the filmmaker with a through line for presenting a history of race in America. Charlottesville is the perfect setting for this discourse: now the contentious statue of Robert E. Lee is cloaked in black plastic, a giant garbage bag, but no one from Charlottesville, home of the University of Virginia, wants the August incident, the killing of a young woman by a white supremacist from somewhere else, to define them. The university, founded by Thomas Jefferson, is a point of great pride, as is the Virginia Film Festival, one of its special events. Yes, Jefferson owned slaves and the tour guides at his Monticello residence do not soften the subject as they move visitors through the Hemings’ family cabin. Re-contextualizing the given story of our country, Lee observes on Christopher Columbus, how can they say he discovered America, when there were people already here?

Other highlights of the VFF: director Trudie Styler attended to introduce her movie Freak Show, director William H. Macy showed his movie Krystal. Another movie Starfish shines a light on sepsis/meningitis and the way this insidious infection ravages the human body. For the centerpiece film, Hostiles, director Scott Cooper sent a video. He wanted to be in Charlottesville, where he’d lived, to present his film, and prepare the packed Paramount audience who had recently experienced the hate from the summer’s horrific event, for his movie’s violence. The film felt tailor-made for this festival, with its compelling performances by Christian Bale and Rosamund Pike, and its central theme of compassion.

Regina Weinreich

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