Spike Lee and Clara Wu Tsai are launching Playback: The Brooklyn Watch Party, a new two-day festival at the Brooklyn Academy of Music running November 6-7, opening with a special screening and cast reunion for Lee’s 1994 film Crooklyn.
Friday’s opening night at the Howard Gilman Opera House begins with a live pre-show performance directed by Marija Abney of The Soapbox Presents, featuring introductory appearances from Lee, festival co-creator Nicholas Ma, and guest curators Questlove, John Turturro, and Bryan Stevenson. The screening of Crooklyn follows, with an on-stage talkback afterward moderated by Nelson George, reuniting Lee, Alfre Woodard, Zelda Harris, Joie Lee, Cinqué Lee, and David Lee.
Crooklyn is a semi-autobiographical comedy-drama Lee co-wrote with siblings Joie and Cinqué Lee, set in Bedford-Stuyvesant during the summer of 1973. Told through the eyes of nine-year-old Troy Carmichael, played by Harris, the film follows a Brooklyn family anchored by a strict, hardworking mother, played by Woodard, and a jazz musician father, played by Delroy Lindo, whose commitment to his art leaves the family financially unstable. After a difficult stretch spent with relatives in Virginia, shot with a distorted anamorphic lens to capture Troy’s culture shock, she returns home to find her mother terminally ill, forcing her into a caretaking role within the family. Lee cast himself as Snuffy, a neighborhood fixture, and the film marked RuPaul’s feature film debut as a bodega customer. Unlike more overtly political films in Lee’s catalog like Do the Right Thing or Malcolm X, Crooklyn has endured as one of his most intimate, personal portraits of Black family life.
Saturday’s programming shifts outward, with a free street fair and block party running from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Lafayette Avenue outside BAM Rose Cinemas, featuring Brooklyn DJs, Soul Summit, Bring Your Own Vinyl, art installations by Katie Merz, double dutch, and local food and drink vendors, alongside continued ticketed screenings and talks inside BAM.
Opening night tickets range from $46 to $76 through the BAM Playback Box Office (click here for more information), with local nonprofit initiatives running community ticket lotteries for Fort Greene residents and nearby NYCHA developments, including the Walt Whitman, Ingersoll, and Farragut houses. Saturday’s street festival is free and open to the public.
With a hometown festival built around Brooklyn’s own cultural history and anchored by one of Lee’s most personal films, Playback positions itself less as a traditional film festival and more as a direct extension of the neighborhood it’s celebrating.