She’s Gotta Have It

She's Gotta Have It was Spike Lee's first film and humorously explored the self-confident sexuality of a young black woman. Lee's 1986 film was the beginning of a wave of African-American cinema that explored themes from a black perspective. 
The programme of the same name also brings together works in which women insist on a self-determined identity and representation of themselves or their concerns. Of course, this does not have to conform to common behavioural patterns or social conventions. What seems more important in these films is overcoming normative restrictions and relationships. Exceptional female personalities take individual and courageous paths. (bbu)