Please join Best Video Film & Cultural Center for the first film in our July Screening Series: Spike Lee Retrospective, CROOKLYN on Tuesday, July 9th, at 7pm.

Tickets are free to Best Video Members/$10 for non-members. The Best Video Coffee Bar will be open for beer, wine, café drinks, and free popcorn.

GET YOUR NON-MEMBER TICKETS HERE

Crooklyn is a 1994 American semi-autobiographical film produced and directed by Spike Lee, who wrote it with his siblings Joie and Cinqué. Taking place in the Bedford–Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, during the summer of 1973, the film primarily centers on a young girl named Troy Carmichael (played by Zelda Harris), and her family. Troy learns life lessons through her rowdy brothers Clinton, Wendell, Nate, and Joseph; her loving but strict mother Carolyn (Alfre Woodard), and her naive, struggling father Woody (Delroy Lindo).

A distinctive characteristic of Crooklyn is its soundtrack, composed almost completely of music from the 1960s and 1970s. The exception is the hit single "Crooklyn" by the Crooklyn Dodgers, a rap crew consisting of Buckshot, Masta Ace, and Special Ed. A two-volume release of the soundtrack became available on CD concurrent with release of the film.

As in his past films such as School Daze, Do the Right Thing, and She's Gotta Have It, Spike Lee appears in Crooklyn. He plays a young glue huffer named Snuffy, who likes to bully the local children.

Crooklyn is the second of two films directed by Spike Lee to earn a PG-13 rating in the United States, as did Malcolm X. Others were restricted to adults.

New Yorkers selected the film in 2017 for simultaneous screenings across New York City as part of that year's "One Film, One New York" contest.

BVFCC would like to acknowledge and thank several organizations for their generous funding which allows us to present our monthly Screening Series. Special thanks go to CT Humanities, CT Office of the Arts, and The Community Foundation for Greater New Haven.