As part of the Heat Wave series, the Revue Cinema presents one of the most seminal summer films. This Spike Lee masterpiece defined urban summertime in ’89, showed the sweat beading down each character’s foreheads, had sets painted a hot red to capture 100 degree weather on camera, popped open a fire hydrant to stay cool during the blistering heat – because that’s what you do when you need to stay cool with no money in your pocket.
But Do The Right Thing is so much more than a great summer flick or even a master class on auteur theory. It showed the white movie-going audience what it meant to be black in Brooklyn. Here, Lee made a movie that captures the black experience like no other by asking the audience questions and refusing to spoon feed them the answers. -MOSHEH HERDSMAN
“The colour for today is black. So you can absorb some of these rays and save that heat for winter–” the first lines spoken by Samuel L. Jackson’s character in Do The Right Thing.