Here are best films made about black American worlds, and in this order:
To Sleep With Anger - Charles Burnett
Devil In A Blue Dress - Carl Franklin
Moonlight - Barry JenkinsDo The Right Thing - Spike Lee
The Color Purple - Steven Spielberg
Daughters of the Dust - Julia Dash
Killer of Sheep - Charles Burnett
She's Got to Have It - Spike Lee
Eve's Bayou - Kasi Lemmons
Fences - Denzel Washington
As you can see, there is only one white director in this list. It's Steven Spielberg. Elizabeth Banks apparently has never heard of his film The Color Purple, otherwise she would not have made the statement that Spielberg had never made a film with a female lead. Indeed, not only does the film have females in starring roles, it launched the career of a black woman, Whoopi Goldberg; claimed the best performance of an American (and black) icon, Oprah Winfrey; and is based on a book by one of the three black women writers (Alice Walker) who revolutionized black American literature in the 1970s (the other two being Toni Cade Bambara and Toni Morrison).
I will even go as far as to say that Steven Spielberg.'s adaptation is actually better than the book—which lacks the blues, the slow poetry, the pastoral beauty of the film. I will even go as far as to say that The Color Purple is (in terms of a work of art) Spielberg's best film. Banks' line of attack exposed her ignorance (and, according to The Root, privilege).
This week, white women were loud and wrong.
Let's discuss Elizabeth Banks and Sofia Coppola ignoring the existence of black people. pic.twitter.com/j568zCMX5A
— The Root (@TheRoot) June 23, 2017