SILVERDOCS: Day Three

Day Three at SILVERDOCS brought big guests and big crowds, with appearances from Spike Lee and Sheila C. Johnson.

Named for the four-time Academy Award-winning filmmaker Charles Guggenheim, the Symposium honors a filmmaker whose work captures current events, frames history and inspires audiences.

The 2008 Guggenheim Symposium celebrated award-winning director, producer, writer and actor Spike Lee. An in-depth conversation between Lee and Denver Post film critic Lisa Kennedy followed clips from Lee's films.

Arguably the most provocative filmmaker of his generation, Spike Lee paints on a wide social canvas and is equally prolific in documentary and narrative filmmaking. Few directors have examined race, class and other divisive forces in America with both honesty and a signature aesthetic that blends music and imagery to brilliant effect. His documentary oeuvre includes the Academy Award-nominated 4 LITTLE GIRLS (1997), about the racist bombing of a Birmingham, Alabama church in 1963; the concert film THE ORIGINAL KINGS OF COMEDY (2000); the biography JIM BROWN: ALL AMERICAN (2002); and WE WUZ ROBBED (2002), an unflinching 10-minute deconstruction of the 2000 presidential election. Lee's most recent documentary is the Peabody Award-winning WHEN THE LEVEES BROKE: A REQUIEM IN FOUR ACTS (2006), a sprawling, exhaustive and furious chronicle of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath which bears witness to this modern American tragedy.

Sheila C. Johnson, an entrepreneur and philanthropist whose accomplishments span the arenas of hospitality, sports, TV/film, the arts, and humanitarian causes, joined us for a Plenary Session introduced by Jean Picker Firstenberg, AFI's President Emerita.

Johnson is chief executive of Salamander Hospitality, LLC, overseeing a growing portfolio of luxury properties and lifestyle businesses. As president & managing partner of the WNBA's Washington Mystics, and a partner in Lincoln Holdings, LLC, Johnson is the first woman to have a stake in three professional sports teams, including the Washington Wizards (NBA) and the Washington Capitals (NHL). She is also a television pioneer, having been a founding partner of Black Entertainment Television (BET). Johnson is creating and championing films with a humanitarian message. Her latest film, A Powerful Noise, premiered at the 2008 Tribeca Film Festival in New York City.