WATERVILLE – Like any gifted filmmaker, Spike Lee addressed his audience in three acts Friday during a speech at Colby College. And he introduced the conflict in the second act, when he called out power brokers in Hollywood for lack of diversity.

Lee, 54, was the keynote speaker for S.H.O.U.T! — Speaking, Hearing, Opening Up Together — a weekend of student-organized events that celebrate multiculturalism and community at the college.

More than 500 students and faculty members packed Lorimer Chapel, while more watched the speech on a video feed in three separate buildings.

Lee, wearing a sweater, a ball cap and basketball shoes, stood casually beside the lectern and told stories about his academic struggles before he found his true calling.

“I was a C-minus student,” he said, as an underclassman at Morehouse College in Atlanta in the 1970s. “I was just getting by.”

Then, during a summer break from school, his life changed when he borrowed a Super 8 camera and documented New York City during the tumultuous summer of 1977 — the blackouts, the riots and block party discos.

That fall, he re-entered school with purpose, he said. He cut the footage into a film called “Last Hustle in Brooklyn,” which was well received by peers and faculty members.

“I was like, boom. I want to be a filmmaker.”

Lee said he wanted to change the landscape of entertainment in America to better portray the vitality of the African-American community.

Despite those efforts, Lee said, Hollywood is slow to reflect the communities it serves.

For instance, Lee said, the first African-American actress to win an Oscar was Hattie McDaniel, in 1940 for “Gone With the Wind.”

Seventy-two years later, on the day an African-American president delivered his third State of the Union address, the Academy of Motion Pictures nominated two African-American actresses for playing maids, Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer, in “The Help.”

They are the only African-American nominees for major awards this year.

“That’s progress,” Lee joked. “In 1940, we had one maid. Now we have two.”

Part of the problem, he said, is a lack of representation on the boards and committees that approve film projects.

Lee has made dozens of studio and independent films and documentaries, dating back to the mid-1980s. He is best known for “Do the Right Thing,” “Malcolm X,” “Four Little Girls” and “When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts,” a documentary about Hurricane Katrina.

Morning Sentinel Staff Writer Ben McCanna can be contacted at 861-9239 or at:

bmccanna@centralmaine.com