SOURCE: "He's Gotta Have It: An Interview with Spike Lee," in Cineaste, Vol. 18, No. 4, 1991, pp. 12-15.

In the following interview, Lee discusses his film Jungle Fever and his approach to filmmaking.

Spike Lee is a filmmaker with a vision and an agenda. He makes no bones about it: his purpose is to hold his cinematic mirror up to reflect African-American reality as experienced by his generation. These are the young blacks who grew up after the civil rights movement and the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X. They have seen the dream of a Great Society and Affirmative Action crumble into crackhouses and quota-babble.

Not yet thirty-five, Lee has directed five feature films since 1986—She's Gotta Have It, School Daze, Do the Right Thing, Mo' Better Blues, and Jungle Fever—which have earned him a controversial reputation for interpreting contemporary black America to itself and...