On April 27, join Film at Lincoln Center as we honor the career of Academy Award-winning director Spike Lee at the 46th Chaplin Award Gala. Tickets are now on sale!
Spike Lee has left an indelible mark on filmmaking and television. His career spans 30 years and includes She’s Gotta Have It, School Daze, Do the Right Thing, Mo’ Better Blues, Jungle Fever, Malcolm X, Crooklyn, Clockers, Girl 6, Get on the Bus, He Got Game, Summer of Sam, Bamboozled, 25th Hour, She Hate Me, Inside Man, Miracle at St. Anna, Red Hook Summer, Oldboy, Chi-Raq, and his recent hit BlacKkKlansman, which won him the Grand Prix at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival and his first Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. Lee was previously a two-time Oscar nominee (Do the Right Thing for Best Original Screenplay and 4 Little Girls for Best Documentary Feature), and was awarded an Honorary Oscar in 2015 for his lifetime achievement and contributions to the state of motion picture arts and sciences.
Film at Lincoln Center will also present a selected retrospective of Lee’s films alongside the gala. “Few filmmakers have amassed a body of work as consistently vital, moving, provocative, and uncompromising as that of Spike Lee,” said FLC Director of Programming Dennis Lim. “From his 1983 student film Joe’s Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads to last year’s BlacKkKlansman, his films spare no quarter in capturing American society and the state of race relations. They compel us to look at our country, its culture, and its history anew.”
The annual gala began in 1972 when it honored Charlie Chaplin, who returned to the U.S. from exile to accept the commendation. Since then, the Chaplin Award has been presented to many of the film industry’s most notable talents, including Alfred Hitchcock, Billy Wilder, Laurence Olivier, Federico Fellini, Elizabeth Taylor, Bette Davis, James Stewart, Robert Altman, Martin Scorsese, Diane Keaton, Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks, Sidney Poitier, Barbra Streisand, Robert Redford, Morgan Freeman, Robert De Niro, and Helen Mirren.
The Chaplin Award Gala is the most important fundraising event of the year for Film at Lincoln Center, and all proceeds benefit the nonprofit in its mission to support the art and elevating the craft of cinema.
