Clint Eastwood Strikes Back at Spike Lee's Claims

Clint Eastwood has responded to fellow director Spike Lee's claims that there are too few black actors in his films, saying he should "shut his face".

Speaking to the Guardian newspaper, Eastwood said his 2006 film Flags of Our Fathers was historically accurate.

The Oscar winner insisted that black troops were not involved in raising the flag at Iwo Jima.

"If I go ahead and put an African American actor in there, they'd say 'this guy's lost his mind,'" he said.

At this year's Cannes Film Festival, film-maker Lee challenged reporters to ask Eastwood why there were no black actors in either of his films about the Battle of Iwo Jima. "That was his version. The Negro version did not exist," said Lee.

Eastwood said that there was a small detachment of black troops in the World War II battle, but they were part of a munitions company.

"The story is Flags of Our Fathers, the famous flag-raising picture, and they didn't do that," he told the Guardian. "It's not accurate."

The Human Factor, will look at post-apartheid South Africa: "I'm not going to make Nelson Mandela a white guy," he joked.

SpikeLee is slamming Clint Eastwood over his two recent Iwo Jima movies,saying the filmmaker overlooked the role of black soldiers during WorldWar II.

Lee - whose next film is this fall's "Miracle at St. Anna,"the story of an all-black U.S. division fighting in Italy during thewar - said Eastwood's 2006 movies "Flags of Our Fathers" and "LettersFrom Iwo Jima" were whites-only affairs.

"He did two films aboutIwo Jima back to back and there was not one black soldier in both ofthose films," Lee said Tuesday at the Cannes Film Festival, where hewas a judge in an online short-film competition.

"Many veterans,African-Americans, who survived that war are upset at Clint Eastwood.In his vision of Iwo Jima, Negro soldiers did not exist. Simple asthat. I have a different version," Lee said.

Director Spike Lee was in Cannes to hand out awards of $31,360 each to seven emerging directors whose work was championed by Internet users in an online film festival hosted by Babelgum, an Internet company that streams videos online for free.

The awards ceremony late Tuesday was hosted on the sidelines of the famous French Riviera festival. About 2,000 short films were submitted, and 1,012 films from 86 countries were picked to compete. Hundreds of thousands of people watched the movies, posted comments or voted on their favorite picks.

Films that generated buzz online were whittled down by a jury, and Lee had the final say.

Lee believes there's more interesting, innovative material online than on TV or in movie theaters.