This year the two top contenders were prime examples of the burgeoning American independent-film phenomenon: Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing, a portrait of a multiracial American neighborhood on the verge of exploding, and Steven Soderbergh’s romantic comedy about sexual dysfunction and deception. Soderbergh won the top prize and Lee got nothing, stoking a rancorous, racially tinged debate. Both films did well when they were released in the States that summer, and both sparked mini-genres — the angry black drama and the subtly winning indie slice of middle-class mores. They announced the arrival of two hard-working, hard-to-pigeonhole auteurs.
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