Spike Lee Brings ‘Malcolm X’ Back To Saudi Arabia; Talks Colin Kaepernick Doc, Cameroon Ancestry & Slams American Foundations Based On Slavery – Red Sea Festival
deadline.comSpike Lee is at Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea International Film Festival in the port city of Jeddah this weekend to present a screening of his Oscar-nominated 1992 epic biopic Malcolm X and participate in an In-Conversation event.
The whirlwind trip coincides with the 30th anniversary ofthe film, which was the first fiction feature to shoot in Mecca, using a Muslim crew to shoot a B-roll for scenes in which the human rights activist makes the Haj pilgrimage to the holy site. “It was imperative that we shoot, that we film Malcolm’s Haj so we were the first film ever allowed to bring a camera in the old city of Mecca.
I couldn’t go. We hired a Muslim crew. The highest law court they didn’t do that for me, they realized how important Malcolm was to Islam,” he said. “We had a screening yesterday.
That is the first time Malcolm X has ever been screened in the country on a movie screen. We’ve come full circle.” Asked if he would be interested in coming to shoot in the Arab world or film another language, Lee batted back the idea. “I can barely speak English.
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