Do the Right Thing – Film at The Share Centre

Venue: The Share Centre | 88 Stow Hill, Newport, NP20 4DW
Date: 02/10/2026
Doors: 18:00 Close: 22:00
Entry: Free

DO THE RIGHT THING

Directed by Spike Lee | USA | 1989 | 120 mins

On the hottest day of the year in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, Mookie works as a delivery driver for Sal's Famous Pizzeria. As he moves through the neighbourhood, we meet the people who make up this community: friends, families, shopkeepers, neighbours, teenagers, workers and people simply passing the time on the street. There is music everywhere. People argue, flirt, joke, complain and look out for one another. Then Buggin' Out notices something. Sal's Wall of Fame celebrates famous Italian Americans; but there are no Black faces on the wall, despite the pizzeria being part of a predominantly Black neighbourhood. What begins as an argument about a wall becomes something much bigger. As the temperature rises, questions of race, ownership, representation, prejudice and power increasingly come to the surface, until the neighbourhood reaches breaking point.

Written, directed by and starring Spike Lee, Do the Right Thing became one of the defining American films of the late 1980s and remains one of Lee’s most celebrated and provocative works. Shot by cinematographer Ernest Dickerson, with costume design by Ruth E. Carter and a soundtrack driven by Public Enemy’s unforgettable “Fight the Power,” the film creates a Brooklyn neighbourhood bursting with colour, movement, music and personality. What makes the film so powerful is that Lee never reduces the community to a simple conflict between heroes and villains. Love and anger, solidarity and prejudice, comedy and violence exist side by side. The result is a film about racism, but also about community, economic inequality, cultural identity, policing, belonging and who gets to control the spaces in which we live.

WHY WATCH IT NOW?

Do the Right Thing was made in 1989, but it doesn't feel safely contained in 1989. Its questions about police violence, racial prejudice, who owns and shapes a neighbourhood, whose culture is represented, economic inequality and what happens when communities become divided remain immediately recognisable. Spike Lee gives us comedy, arguments, hip-hop, romance, anger, extraordinary colour, street fashion and a neighbourhood filled with characters who rarely agree with each other. The film doesn't give us an easy hero or a simple villain. Instead, it asks us to spend a day inside a community where love and hate, solidarity and prejudice, humour and anger exist side by side. And then it leaves us to argue about what we've seen.

THE LOOK. THE MUSIC. THE ATTITUDE.

Part of what makes Do the Right Thing feel so alive is its style. Cinematographer Ernest Dickerson fills the screen with intense reds, oranges and yellows, making us almost feel the heat coming from the pavement. Costume designer Ruth E. Carter, who would later win Academy Awards for Black Panther and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, uses clothing, trainers, colour and Black street style to help define each character and the world they inhabit. And then there is the sound. Radio Raheem walks through the neighbourhood carrying an enormous boombox repeatedly blasting one song:

PUBLIC ENEMY — FIGHT THE POWER

Spike Lee commissioned Public Enemy to create “Fight the Power” for the film. It became inseparable from Do the Right Thing, and one of the defining political hip-hop tracks of its era.

BLACK HISTORY MONTH AT URBAN CIRCLE

We have chosen Do the Right Thing to open our Black History Month 2026 screenings because, more than three decades after its release, the questions it asks remain remarkably alive. It is also the history of music, cinema, fashion, protest, neighbourhoods, creativity and the struggle over who gets to tell stories and whose experiences appear on screen.

Spike Lee was just 32 years old when Do the Right Thing was released. The film helped establish him internationally as one of the most distinctive voices of a new generation of Black filmmakers, and its influence can still be felt across cinema, music videos, television, fashion and visual culture.

If you've never seen a Spike Lee film before, start here. Join us for the film and stay afterwards for an informal conversation. Who was right? Who was wrong? Could what happens have been prevented? Who has power in this neighbourhood? What would doing the right thing actually mean?

Friday 2 October 2026. Everyone welcome.