Our celebration of Spike Lee’s amazing career continues with this special screening, chosen by the director. Bamboozledsatirizes popular culture and adds dance legend Savion Glover’s muscular tapping to the mix to create an indelible film that has only grown in power in the 25 years since its release. Tommy Davidson and Glover star as Womack and Manray, a pair of buskers recruited to star in a modern-day minstrel show in Spike Lee’s scabrous tragicomedy. Unhappy television writer Pierre Delacroix (Damon Wayans) is desperate to get away from his boss Dunwitty (Michael Rapaport) and the man’s many micro and macro aggressions. Pierre can’t quit without breaking his contract, so he seeks to get fired by mounting a flamboyantly racist TV series so offensive it’s bound to fail. When the opposite happens and the show becomes not just a hit but a cultural phenomenon, Womack, Manray, and even Delacroix initially enjoy their success but the reprehensible material and the laughter it engenders begins to eat at their souls. A rare big screen opportunity! —Pam Grady
SPECIAL SCREENING • BAMBOOZLED
Spike Lee
After winning a Student Academy Award® for his short Joe’s Bed-Stuy Barber Shop: We Cut Heads (1983), Spike Lee made his indelible feature debut with She’s Gotta Have It (1986). That film won the Cannes Film Festival’s Award of Youth and the Independent Spirit Award for Best First Feature. In a career that spans four decades, among his films are School Daze (1988); Do the Right Thing (1989), for which Lee received a Best Original Screenplay Oscar® nomination; Malcolm X (1992); 4 Little Girls (1997), an Oscar nominee for Best Documentary; Summer of Sam (1999); Inside Man (2006); BlacKkKlansman (2018), for which Lee was nominated for a Best Director Oscar and shared the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay; and Highest 2 Lowest (2025).