How times
flies. It’s been 25 years already? Where were you when you first saw Do The
Right Thing?
Today it
was announced that a special 25th anniversary screening of the film
will take place next month, with Spike Lee present, at this year’s 16th annual Ebertfest Film Festival on Friday April 25th.
The festival,
which was founded by the late great film critic and essayist Roger Ebert, is set in Champaign, Illinois, very near his home
town of Urbana, at the Virginia
Theater, where Ebert grew up, spending many hours watching and loving.movies.
As Ebert
himself said about Spike’s film:
“I have been given
only a few film-going experiences in my life to equal the first time I saw ‘Do
the Right Thing.’ Most movies remain up there on the screen. Only a few
penetrate your soul. In May of 1989 I walked out of the screening at the Cannes
Film Festival with tears in my eyes. Spike Lee had done an almost impossible
thing. He’d made a movie about race in America that empathized with all the
participants. He didn’t draw lines or take sides but simply looked with sadness
at one racial flashpoint that stood for many others.”
Among those
who will also be present at this year’s Ebertfest are directors Steve James (Hoop Dreams, The interrupters), who will show his latest documentary about Ebert, Life
Itself, which premiered at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. It will be the opening night film at Ebertfest. Also Oliver Stone will be present to celebrate
the 25th anniversary of Born on the
Fourth of July.
The full
schedule for Ebertfest, which takes place from April 23-27, will be announced very soon. Tickets will officially go
on sale starting on April 1st.
Go HERE for
more info about Ebertfest as it develops.
And after 25
years, here’s what is still one of the best opening credit sequences for any movie ever:
