Keynote speaker Spike Lee released a sneak peek of his new joint at the Nedbank Digital Edge Live conference. Helen Herimbi reports
They are not just movies. Spike Lee joints – as they are called – are the kind of cinematic experience that can alter a state of mind. The kind that most people can’t help but pass around. So it was fitting then that the filmmaker – a major drawcard for this year’s Nedbank Digital Edge Live conference – shared 15 minutes of Chiraq, the latest Spike Lee joint with us.
Set in what’s become America’s hotbed of (mostly) black-on-black gun violence and murder, Chicago has been given a new name.
“The film is about a very desperate city,” Lee said about what rappers from the South side of Chicago – an area they deem to be more dangerous than Iraq – have dubbed Chiraq, a tag which merges the names of the places.
The film stars Nick Cannon, Angela Bassett, Dave Chappelle, Wesley Snipes, Jennifer Hudson and more. And just as he was the almost-omniscient radio show host in Lee’s seminal, Do The Right Thing, actor, Samuel L Jackson plays a similar role in Chiraq – minus the DJ bit.
Inspired by a 411 BC play called Lysistrata by Aristophanes, where women refuse their men sex until they laid down arms, Chiraq, follows Cannon, a rapper who lives by the gun – just like every other man in his neighbourhood. The women decide they’ve had enough and declare “no peace, no p***y.”
Just like in the play, most of the dialogue in this film is delivered in rhyme which can dilute the whole dynamic of what seems to be a powerful narrative. “We thought it wouldn’t be that crazy,” said Lee, who wore a peace sign medallion around his neck at the conference, as he explained the need to keep verse as a mechanism, “because of hip hop and spoken word. People would understand it.”
While it was cool that Lee gave us a sneak peak, most people were there to hear the legend talk about how he became one.
This was a digital conference so it made sense for him to talk about his partnership with Amazon that will see Chiraq become the digital giant’s first theatrical release before it is showcased online.
Digital met storytelling – which was a big theme of the conference. The speakers had various vantage points to share – most of which were interesting. One of the stories that captured the hearts of many was Lee’s adaptation of Alex Haley’s Autobiography of Malcolm X. Lee recalled how the ANC made it possible for him and his crew to fly to Soweto to shoot Nelson Mandela’s classroom scene that ends off the 1992 biopic.
He also talked about a little known fact: Mandela refused to say Malcolm X’s famous phrase (“By any means necessary”) word for word on camera. “Before we were to shoot, Mandela said, ‘I’m very happy to be in the movie but I cannot say those words,” Lee remembers. He said Madiba knew “the foes of democracy would use that against him” when he ran for president.
undefined”I’ve always felt art can impact to save lives,” he says. And with his catalogue of work, Spike Lee has done just that.
• Chiraq is Amazon’s first theatrical release.