Sundance was abuzz with news of Spike Lee‘s new film, Red Hook Summer, and for good reason. After a nearly four-year hiatus from film making, he unveiled his new joint at the festival, an ambitious project about a teenager forced to spend a summer with his religious grandfather. Since its premiere,Variance Films picked up the film, cut it down 14 minutes and scheduled it for release on August 10th, giving the director’s fans a reason to look forward to summer’s end.
A poster for the film was released today, and it looks familiar – its image harkens back to a still we revealed last December. But at least its existence shows that Red Hook Summer is on its way to the summer release Lee was shooting for. See image and synopsis below:
Synopsis:
When his mom deposits him at the Red Hook housing project in Brooklyn to spend the summer with the grandfather he’s never met, young Flik may as well have landed on Mars. Fresh from his cushy life in Atlanta, he’s bored and friendless, and his strict grandfather, Enoch, a firebrand preacher, is bent on getting him to accept Jesus Christ as his personal savior. Only Chazz, the feisty girl from church, provides a diversion from the drudgery. As hot summer simmers and Sunday mornings brim with Enoch’s operatic sermons, things turn anything but dull as people’s conflicting agendas collide.
Playfully ironic, heightened, yet grounded, Spike Lee’s bold new movie returns him to his roots, where lovable, larger-than-life characters form the tinderbox of a tight-knit community. A story about the coexistence of altruism and corruption, Red Hook Summer toys with expectations, seducing us with the promise of moral and spiritual transcendence. Spike is back in the ’hood.
Lee stars in Red Hook Summer, along with Clarke Peters, Samantha Ivers, Limary Agosto, Heather Simms and Kalon Jackson.
Does Red Hook Summer sound like a winner for Lee? Are you going to see it?