Spike Lee’s politically charged cinema has irked the Academy in the past, but his witty take on how a black policeman outsmarted the Ku Klux Klan could prove sweetly timed

“Today’s young generation, they don’t know anything,” says Spike Lee in the Oscar-winning Rumble in the Jungle documentary, When We Were Kings. “Something happened last year, they know nothing about it. There are these great, great stories. These great historic events. I’m not talking about 1850s stuff. They don’t know who Malcolm X is. They don’t know who JFK is. They don’t know Muhammad Ali or Jackie Robinson. You can go down the line. It’s scary.”

You could interpret Lee’s career, in part, as an exercise in filling those holes in America’s collective memory. Malcolm X is probably the most famous example, with his 1992 film reigniting a debate about the black political leader and his legacy. His documentary 4 Little Girls told the story of the Birmingham church bombing with its eerie parallels to the Charleston church shooting. But even She Hate Me – ostensibly an ethically questionable film about sperm donation – had a section dedicated to the story of Frank Wills, the security guard who raised the alarm about the Watergate break-in, struggled to find work after (he believed he was blacklisted) and who died in extreme poverty in 2000 at the age of 52.