ATLANTA — Oscar-winning Atlanta native filmmaker Spike Lee is celebrating nearly four decades since one of his most iconic movies put HBCUs on the big screen.
The 68-year-old sat down with Channel 2’s Karyn Greer just a few hours before a screening of “School Daze” at the Fox Theatre on Tuesday.
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Lee says coming back to Atlanta to screen the movie based on his time at Morehouse College and filmed at the Atlanta University Center is full circle.
“My father and grandfather went to Morehouse and my mother and grandmother went to Spelman. That’s where they met, simple as that,” he said.
He moved to New York as a child, but came back to Atlanta to complete his family legacy.
“I always knew I would have to come back to Atlanta,” he said.
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Lee said that making “School Daze” has had effects that have lasted the rest of his life.
“To this day, 38 years later, people come up to me and say, and thank me, because they got an education in a Black school,” Lee said.
In between his time making films, Lee says he has spent the last 30 years teaching as a tenured professor of film at his alma mater, the NYU Graduate Film School.
In 2019, fellow Atlanta filmmaker Tyler Perry dedicated a soundstage at Tyler Perry Studios to Lee, but he hasn’t had a chance to make a movie or TV show there.
“I’m gonna do it,” he said. “I can’t say when, but it’s gonna happen.”
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