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SINGAPORE: American directors are increasingly looking to Europe and elsewhere to finance their films as funding from home has been limited, according to filmmaker Spike Lee who was in Singapore recently for the Global Brand Forum - a conference where top leaders shared ideas on branding.
The Oscar-nominated director's latest film, which was shot in Tuscany, was funded in part by investors from Italy and France.
The 51-year-old has made more than 20 films in the past three decades - most of them about the black community in the United States.
Lee said this is simply because the culture is in his blood. "Yes, it comes natural. I don't have to work at it," he laughed.
It is little wonder that his latest film, Miracle at St Anna, highlights four black American soldiers stranded in 1944 Fascist Italy. It is a topic which the director said has not been featured enough in Hollywood.
Set to hit cinemas in September, Lee said his film is not a direct response to Clint Eastwood's earlier two films of the same genre.
Lee was previously reported to have criticised Eastwood's "Letters from Iwo Jima" and "Flags of our Fathers" for not featuring African American soldiers who fought in World War II.
He explained: "Those things I said were not disrespectful to Mr Eastwood. They were my observation. There have been documentations that there were black marines and black soldiers who were fighting and dying side by side with the white marines and the white soldiers on the volcanic island, Iwo Jima, even though the armies were segregated.
"When the Japanese started to send those bullets flying, all that segregation went out of the window. He has made his film. That's the way he wanted it. I commented on it. And that's all.
"It's the industry - Hollywood as a whole has omitted the black soldiers from World War II, left out the contributions of 1.1 million African-American men and women."
Lee's passion for his own race is also reflected in his political affiliations.
"America is on the verge of having its first African-American president - Barack Obama - which I feel changes everything. I'll be flying to Denver, with my wife for the Democratic National Convention. I want to be there for that historic moment when he officially becomes the democratic nominee for the president of the United States of America," he said.
Lee also revealed that his next project is a documentary about basketball superstar Michael Jordan, which will show a side of the sportsman few have seen before.
- CNA/so
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