DIRECTOR/SCREENPLAY: Spike Lee
PRODUCERS: Jon Kilik, Spike Lee
PRODUCTION CO: 40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks
PHOTOGRAPHY: Ellen Kuras
EDITOR: Sam Pollard
MUSIC: Terence Blanchard 
WITH: Damon Wayans (Pierre Delacroix), Savion Glover (Manray/Mantan), Jada Pinkett Smith (Sloan Hopkins), Tommy Davidson (Womack/Sleep ‘n Eat), Michael Rapaport (Dunwitty)

FESTIVALS: Berlin 2001

REVIEWS

“With this blisteringly funny, unapologetically confrontational satire, writer-director Spike Lee examined the past, present, and future of racism in American popular culture, issuing a daring provocation to creators and consumers alike. Under pressure to help revive his network’s low ratings, television writer Pierre Delacroix (Damon Wayans) hits on an explosively offensive idea: bringing back blackface with The New Millennium Minstrel Show. The white network executives love it, and so do audiences, forcing Pierre and his collaborators to confront their public’s insatiable appetite for dehumanizing stereotypes.”

— Criterion.com

“In a fraught contemporary climate where the mediation of the black image in American society is at a crucial juncture, Bamboozled’s trenchant commentary on the importance, complexity and lasting effects of media representation could hardly feel more urgent… Lee’s film traces a grim continuum between stereotypes old and new, connected by knotty skeins of institutional racism. Many critics at the time of the film’s release suggested that Lee had needlessly reopened old wounds; that the dark days of minstrelsy were comfortably behind us, and that we should move on. Yet Lee’s vision was not only necessary, it proved remarkably prescient.”

— Ashley Clark, Guardian

FILM SOCIETY SCREENINGS

Auckland  
Monday, 31 October, 6.15pm 
WORLD CINEMA selection >>