“This is a story about the evolution of a man. It’s a spiritual, philosophical, political evolution. My prayer is to illustrate that and have that be some kind of a healing for people.” Denzel Washington
Canadian filmmaker Norman Jewison (In the Heat of the Night) was originally attached to direct this adaptation of Arthur Hailey’s biography, but when Spike Lee suggested in the media that a Black director should do it, Jewison and his producers took a meeting with the Do the Right Thing sensation and became convinced he was right. Denzel Washington – who had played Malcolm on stage ten years before and who had just made Mo Better Blues with Lee – was the ideal choice for the title role, and paints not only a precise portrait of the charismatic leader familiar from newsreels, but a layered, compassionate, conflicted man who finds the strength in Islam to transcend his demons and confront the inequity and racism in America. Lee insisted on an epic canvas and sought to emulate the scope he admired in the films of David Lean (Lawrence of Arabia; The Bridge on the River Kwai). He even hit up Black celebrities (Oprah, Prince, Michael Jordan) for donations when the budget ran out. His efforts and their faith were more than justified. The film stands as a powerful testament to the man and his times.
“One of the great American films not only of the decade but the century… Spike Lee poured everything he had learned about cinema, politics, behavior and culture into one 201-minute Molotov cocktail of epic filmmaking. An eloquent and intimate character study as well as a sweeping portrait of America in the second half of the 20th century.” Jim Hemphill, Indiewire
Spike Lee’s Malcolm X is one of the great screen biographies, celebrating the whole sweep of an American life that began in sorrow and bottomed out on the streets and in prison before its hero reinvented himself. Watching the film, I understood more clearly how we do have the power to change our own lives, how fate doesn’t deal all of the cards. The film is inspirational and educational – and it is also entertaining.
Roger Ebert
Spike Lee
Denzel Washington, Angela Bassett, Delroy Lindo, Spike Lee, Al Freeman Jr, Albert Hall, Theresa Randle, Lonette McKee
USA
1992
English
Book Tickets
Indigenous & Community Access
Credits
Producer
Spike Lee, Marvin Worth
Screenwriter
Arnold Perl, Spike Lee
Cinematography
Ernest Dickerson
Editor
Barry Alexander Brown
Original Music
Terence Blanchard
Production Design
Wynn Thomas
Art Director
Tom Warren
Catch More Black History Month Programming
Also in Icons
The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings
This boisterous comedy about a breakaway barnstorming Black baseball team in the 1930s should be better known. It's an entertaining gloss on one enterprising ball player's resourceful response to segregated leagues, with Star Wars' Billy Dee Williams.
Under the Cherry Moon (35mm)
Prince is Christopher Tracy, a gigolo on the French Riviera, determined to seduce $50 million heiress Kristin Scott Thomas (!). The pop star's directorial debut is a quirky, fun throwback to old school Hollywood glamour, with knobs on.
Dispatches
Dear Jackie (Free Screening)
Henri Pardo's film is a cinematic letter to Jackie Robinson, the first African American player in Major League Baseball and a civil rights activist who broke the colour barrier when he joined the minor-league Montreal Royals in 1946. For a short time, the impossible seemed possible in a segregated North America.
James Baldwin Abroad: Istanbul - Paris - London
These three short docs, from 1968 - 1973, offer sharp, piercing glimpses of Baldwin in private and public, sometimes in repose and relaxed but more often holding forth, embroiled in the thorny discourse of racial politics, identity and self expression.
"This Time It's Personal" Films by Camille Billops & James Hatch (Programme 1)
Trailblazing artist and polymath Camille Billops and her partner James Hatch were courageous independent filmmakers who chronicled the ups and downs of their personal lives and family histories, and found in them the temperature of their times.
"This Time It's Personal" Films by Camille Billops & James Hatch (Programme 2)
The second programme in our short selection of independent films by Camille Bishops and James Hatch includes what is probably their masterpiece, Finding Christa, a deeply personal film about Camille's relationship with the daughter she gave up for adoption as a child.
New Releases
Descendant
Brown's moving film zeroes in on the descendants of the 110 slaves brought in on the last known slave ship to transport kidnapped Africans to America as human cargo, an illegal shipment undertaken as a bet by a local landowner, Timothy Meaher.
