BAMBOOZLED w/ Sam Pollard + Ashley Clark

Film description: 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.

Following the film, we're thrilled to offer a discussion between Bamboozled editor Sam Pollard and Criterion Collection's curatorial director Ashley Clark about this important film and Pollard's long-standing collaboration with Spike Lee.

Academy Award nominee Sam Pollard, who recently relocated to Baltimore, has directed such documentaries as Mr. Soul!, MLK/FBI, and Max Roach: The Drum Also Waltzes (also screening within New/Next), along with episodes of the pivotal documentary series Eyes on the Prize. Pollard also has a long career as editor, including work on Style Wars, Ganja and Hess, and Chisholm '72: Unbought & Unbossed; and such Spike Lee films as Mo' Better Blues, Jungle Fever, Clockers, 4 Little Girls, and Bamboozled.

Ashley Clark is the curatorial director at the Criterion Collection and the author of Facing Blackness: Media and Minstrelsy in Spike Lee’s “Bamboozled.” Previously, he worked as director of film programming at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and he has curated film series at BFI Southbank, the Museum of Modern Art, TIFF Bell Lightbox, and the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, among other venues. He has contributed writing to publications including the New York Times, Film Comment, Reverse Shot, and Sight and Sound.