Playback at BAM: Spike Lee's Brooklyn Watch Party Turns Fort Greene Into a Movie Block Party
A brand-new two-day festival brings classic films, big-name curators and a free street party to BAM this weekend. Here is how to do Saturday.
Photo: Michael Moloney / Unsplash.
Brooklyn has always known how to throw a block party. This weekend, it is throwing one for the movies.
Playback: The Brooklyn Watch Party is a new two-day festival at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in Fort Greene, running Friday, November 6, and Saturday, November 7. It was created by filmmaker and producer Nicholas Ma, and it is presented with Spike Lee and Clara Wu Tsai, owner of the New York Liberty and the Brooklyn Nets. The idea is simple: bring great films back to the big screen and let the whole borough watch together.
The lineup
The festival opened with Crooklyn, Spike Lee's love letter to 1970s Bed-Stuy, with Lee and Nicholas Ma introducing it.
Saturday's slate is stacked:
- Love & Basketball
- City of God, curated by Bryan Stevenson
- The Battle of Algiers
- Divorce Italian Style
- Salaam Bombay!
- The King of Comedy
- Soul to Soul
Questlove and John Turturro are among the festival's guest curators, alongside Stevenson, with conversations and appearances built around the screenings.
The free part
On Saturday, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., there is a free street party outside BAM Rose Cinemas, hosted with The Soapbox, with local Brooklyn artists, musicians and food. No ticket needed.
Film tickets are sold individually through BAM, and prices vary by screening.
The Den's take
Look at that lineup. A Black romance that became a generation's favorite. A Brazilian classic about growing up in Rio's favelas. A landmark film about Algeria's fight for independence. A soul concert film shot in Ghana. A Bed-Stuy childhood. These are stories from every corner of the culture, and they are being shown in the borough that gave the world so many of its own.
That is what The Stoop is about: culture that belongs to the neighborhood, shared out loud. If you are anywhere near Fort Greene on Saturday, go. Catch a film you have only seen on a laptop, grab something to eat at the street party, and remember what it feels like to watch a movie with a room full of people who love it as much as you do.
How to go
- Where: BAM, 30 Lafayette Avenue, Fort Greene, Brooklyn
- When: Saturday, November 7. Street party 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.
- Tickets and showtimes: bam.org
Follow @theinnovatorsden.
Sources: BAM: Playback, The Brooklyn Watch Party · Time Out New York: The best things to do in NYC this week · Time Out New York: Spike Lee joined by Questlove, John Turturro for Playback