*A Spike Lee documentary about racial protests at the University of Missouri this fall is making its premiere Wednesday night at a theater near the campus.
Lee teamed with ESPN to produce the documentary, which examines how the Black Lives Matter movement sparked activism on Mizzou’s campus — including the football team— and the rest of the county. Protests were sparked by what activists called administrators’ indifference to racial issues on campus.
According to the Columbia Daily Tribune, Lee contacted the university to set up a screening of a one-hour version of the film, which is being shown at the Missouri Theatre in downtown Columbia,.
The documentary was initially set to premiere May 31 as part of a package of short films by Lee collectively called “Spike Lee’s Lil’ Joints.” Jennifer Cingari, a publicist for ESPN Films, said the network still plans to premiere a 22-minute version of the documentary on the network’s platforms around that time. A third 30-minute version of the documentary will also be shown at the Tribeca Film Festival this month in New York City.
Lee was on campus last month to interview subjects for the film and record footage of the Concerned Student 1950 group as it protested at multiple spots on campus.
The protests resulted in campus chancellor R. Bowen Loftin and University of Missouri System president Tim Wolfe resigning amid discord that included a graduate student’s hunger strike and members of the school’s football team pledging to boycott the rest of their season until Wolfe was gone.
Missouri football coach Barry Odom said he was not contacted to be in Lee’s film or about his players meeting with Lee, but said he trusts they were “responsible” and handled it “the right way.” Odom was promoted after former coach Gary Pinkel announced he was retiring days after the season ended because he was suffering from cancer.
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