Even now, thirty years later, there aren’t many films like SCHOOL DAZE. It’s a big, overstuffed movie, crackling with its director’s obsessions and preoccupations, from the MGM musicals of the 1950s to the politics of the post-civil rights generation of African Americans and the emerging class stratification in black life. It’s heightened, highly-stylized and high energy, with characters that feel simultaneously like archetypes and real, living people.

It is also completely, totally, uncompromisingly Black. This is not a comment about the cast, which is all black and seems to represent every possible shade and hue within the community. It’s a comment about the sensibility. SCHOOL DAZE is a movie about black people, talking to black people, about concerns among black…

In the wake of campus protesting in support of Palestine, we are seeing some of the most principled and organized college students since the Vietnam War. It’s heartening to see the students of America stand firmly against genocide and apartheid. The young people of today were born in the waning years of South African apartheid, a historical moment that feels simply too recent to forget. In 1988, Spike Lee made a film about Black students going to a historically Black college with an administration that refused to divest from South Africa. School Daze is a film about the contradictions of modern life, especially for young Black people in America. Lee—who attended Morehouse College as an undergraduate—crafted a thorny, messy film…

Action! - Spike The Power, Lee The Riot'

A film about horny college guys written and directed by Spike Lee is as intriguing and incredible as one would assume just by reading the description. This is especially true if you factor in actors like Laurence Fishburne and Giancarlo Esposito delivering some really solid performances.

While still a Spike film, there are several storylines, for instance, the one about a kid attempting to lose his virginity that resembles many of the popular films of that time, but ultimately this is a film rooted in the Black identity and the filmmaker uses this setting to raise awareness about Black colleges and racism within the community. Unlike a film like Dear White People,…

I’ve seen fourteen Spike Lee films through the years, but I feel like unless you are bound and determined to watch every film Lee’s made, there will always be blind spots. And wow. School Daze was a big one.

This film explodes with energy from the first frame, and it never lets up. It’s so cool to see actors from films and TV shows like A Different World, Boyz in the Hood, Martin, White Men Can’t Jump, and the Spike Lee cinematic universe all together. Watching these legends from my childhood spin MGM musical style numbers into their own style was such a joy.

There’s nary a white face in the entire film, which shouldn’t have been so revolutionary in…