Black Excellence: Spike Lee Becomes First Black Jury Head At Cannes Film Festival

Spike Lee has been confirmed to head the jury at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival in July, the feat making him to become the first black person to take on the role.

The American film-maker was supposed to perform the function at last year’s event, but it was cancelled due to the pandemic.

But, with Covid-19 still ravaging high in France, and the country making slow progress in its vaccination campaign, doubts remain over whether this year’s edition will go ahead as planned from July 6 to 17, having already been delayed from its usual slot in May.

It would be the biggest get-together for the global industry in more than a year, with most other festivals either cancelled or relegated to online versions in recent months.

Lee, 63, has found a home at Cannes over the years, premiering seven of his films there and winning the second-place Grand Prix in 2018 for “BlacKkKlansman” about a black police officer infiltrating the Ku Klux Klan.

“Throughout the months of uncertainty we’ve just been through, Spike Lee has never stopped encouraging us,” said festival president Pierre Lescure in a statement.

“We could not have hoped for a more powerful personality to chart our troubled times.”

With a back-catalogue that has thrown a spotlight on issues of race and politics in the US, Lee was seen as a symbolic choice at a time when the French film industry has been impugned in controversies over the representation of minorities.

The Cannes jury, which selects the winner of the coveted Palme d’Or, has rarely displayed much diversity in the president’s chair.

Hong Kong auteur Wong Kar-wai is the only Asian to have had the honor, while French-Algerian actress Isabelle Adjani was the first of African descent in 1997.

Lee has been able to walk through many, genres but he is best known for films that put the African-American experience front and centre. Those have ranged from slice-of-life classics such as “Do the Right Thing” to more overtly political works such as “Malcolm X” and his most recent Netflix hit “Da 5 Bloods” about black veterans from the Vietnam war.

“BlacKkKlansman” served as a powerful anti-Trump statement and won him his first Oscar, not counting an honorary award he received in 2015.

“To me the Cannes film festival (besides being the most important film festival in the world — no disrespect to anybody) has had a great impact on my film career,” he said in a statement after being selected as jury president last year.

“You could easily say Cannes changed the trajectory of who I became,” he added.

Lee rose to limelight of film scene at Cannes in 1986 with “She’s Gotta Have It”, which took home the Youth Award.

Meanwhile, the official selection for this year’s festival, along with the rest of the jury is due to be named in early June.