Five for Five

Library Journal

This is an essay and photo collection concerning prolific filmmaker Lee's five features: She's Gotta Have It (1986), School Daze (1988), Do the Right Thing (1989), Mo' Better Blues (1990), and Jungle Fever (1991). The book's foreword, by Melvin Van Peebles, is a direct, eloquent, angry, and hard-hitting contextualization and appreciation of the strides made by black filmmakers in the last 20 years. Each feature receives a critical essay by an African American writer or critic of merit, along with a group of photographs by David Lee. The most exciting essays are provided by Toni Cade Bambara (on issues of division by class, color, gender, and sexual preference within the black community), Charles Johnson (on the black community and its artists), and Henry Louis Gates Jr. (on interracial relations). This is an important addition to all collections that address cinema and/or African American culture.-- Robert Rayher, Sch. of the Art Inst. of Chicago