The prodigious Spike Lee doesn’t sleep. Following the one-two punch of back-to-back hit films in 2020—”Da 5 Bloods” and the live-concert doc, “David Byrne’s American Utopia“—Lee is back yet again and with a pretty monstrous project. The four-episode, 8-hour doc series for HBO and HBO Max, “NYC Epicenters 9/11➔2021½,” is epic and vast in the same manner as some of Lee’s previous docs series like the Oscar-nominated “4 Little Girls,” and the Emmy and Peabody-award winning “When The Levees Broke,” and “If God Is Willing and da Creek Don’t Rise.” A sprawling cultural doc about the various horrors New York and New Yorkers have had to endure, 9/11, the COVID-19 epicenter pandemic outbreak of 2020, the Black Lives Matter protest of last summer and more, ‘NYC Epicenters’ is a major look at the way, New York often receives the brunt of calamities in America and how New Yorkers always show great resilience in the face of it.
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“NYC Epicenters” features over 200 interviews and features folks like Jon Stewart, Rosie Perez, Jeffrey Wright, John Turturro; politicians Chuck Schumer, Bill De Blasio, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ron Kim, Mondaire Jones, Stacey Plaskett, Ritchie Torres, Muriel Bowser; medical professionals Dr. Anthony Fauci, Dr. Ian Lipkin, Dr. Fritz Francois; NYFD members; machine operators from Ground Zero; engineers and architects; news anchors and reporters.
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Here’s the truncated version of a very long synopsis, suffice to say, Lee looks back on how COVID-19 hit New York, the Black Lives Matter protests that followed, police brutality in NY, 9/11, Stop Asian Hate, Donald Trump and his four-year reign of terror and how he emboldened so much hate that America will have to contend with for years, the World Trade Center attacks of 1993 and much more:
In NYC EPICENTERS 9/11➔2021½,Spike Lee pays tribute to the city that shaped him and inspired some of his greatest work. As the consummate cinephile, Lee infuses the series with scenes from classic films to amplify his themes, weaving in clips from his own eerily prescient “Do the Right Thing” and “Inside Man,” and intercuts scenes from such films as “On the Waterfront,” “Casablanca,” “On the Town,” alongside cultural figures like Leonard Bernstein into his narrative.
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As a longtime citizen of Brooklyn, a borough hit particularly hard by the COVID-19 crisis, Lee opens his four-part series with an in-depth chronicle of the pandemic as it ravaged his hometown, speaking with doctors, medical professionals, first responders and family members of victims and hearing emotional, wrenching testimonies. Not simply dwelling on the devastating toll of the disease and the trauma left in its wake, Lee reveals stories of solidarity as New Yorkers c
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“NYC Epicenters 9/11➔2021½,” premieres 8:00-10:00 p.m. ET/ on August 22 on HBO and HBO Max. The final episode of the four-part series will air on September 11. Watch the first official trailer below.
