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Sundance Adds World Preem Of The Interrupters, Steve James-Alex Kotlowitz Doc On Stemming Community Violence

Posted Thursday, December 2nd, 2010 - Comments Off on Sundance Adds World Preem Of The Interrupters, Steve James-Alex Kotlowitz Doc On Stemming Community Violence
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CHICAGO FILM THE INTERRUPTERS TO PREMIERE AT SUNDANCE

Kartemquin Documentary Takes an Intimate Look at Urban Violence

Chicago, December 2, 2010—The Kartemquin Films documentary, The Interrupters, will have its world premiere at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival. The film, from acclaimed director Steve James (Hoop Dreams) and bestselling author Alex Kotlowitz (There Are No Children Here) will be part of the Documentary Premieres category, which Sundance created this year for “master filmmakers debuting their new docs about big subjects.”

The Interrupters is Steve James’ fifth film to screen at Sundance and his sixth documentary to be produced with Kartemquin Films, which will kick off a yearlong celebration of the organization’s forty-fifth anniversary at Sundance.

“We are thrilled that The Interrupters will have its world premiere at Sundance,” said Justine Nagan, Executive Director of Kartemquin. “It’s been eight years since we’ve had a film at the festival, and this is the perfect way to begin our anniversary celebrations.”

The Interrupters tells the moving and surprising stories of three “violence interrupters” – two men and a woman – who with bravado, humility and humor try to protect their Chicago communities from the violence they once employed. Shot over the course of a year, the documentary follows these individuals as they attempt to intervene in disputes before they turn violent: a family where two brothers threaten to shoot each other; an angry teenaged girl just home from prison; a young man on a warpath of a revenge.

The Interrupters is an intimate journey into the stubborn, persistence of violence in American cities, and captures not only each interrupters’ work, but reveals their own inspired journeys from crime to hope and redemption. The Interrupters is presented by Kartemquin Films for WGBH/FRONTLINE and the Independent Television Service (ITVS) in association with RISE Films.

“The violence interrupters will attend the festival with us,” said Steve James. “Having a world premiere at Sundance is important not just in introducing The Interrupters to the film world, but also in helping to raise awareness of the issues at its heart.”

The Interrupters will air on FRONTLINE in late 2011 and screen across the country as part of an extensive civic engagement campaign, designed to ensure that the film inspires a national discussion on violence prevention and is seen by the communities most affected by the issue. On December 7th, Kartemquin and the University of Chicago will host community leaders, academics, and organizations working to stem urban violence at a summit designed to develop this vital outreach program.

The 2011 Sundance Film Festival runs from January 20-30, centered in Park City, Utah. Earlier this year, the Sundance Documentary Film Program selected The Interrupters as one of only 18 recipients out to 750 applicants to receive a grant for production funds. Previously, Steve James and Kartemquin Films showcased Hoop Dreams at the 1994 Festival, where winning the Audience Award helped launch the now classic film. In 2003, James’ Kartemquin film Stevie also won the festival’s Cinematography Award.

Since 1966 Kartemquin Films has produced documentaries that examine and critique society through the stories of real people and critical social issues. This Chicago-based “documentary powerhouse” has won every major critical and journalistic prize and is a 2007 recipient of a Macarthur Award for Creative and Effective Institutions. In 2010, Kartemquin was honored with the Altgeld Freedom of Speech Award for “unflinchingly holding up a mirror to American society.”

Kartemquin is a 501(c)3 not-for-profit organization. www.kartemquin.com
The Interrupters (Kartemquin Films, 2011)
Directed and Photographed by Steve James; Producer: Alex Kotlowitz and Steve James; Co-Producer: Zak Piper; Executive Producers: Gordon Quinn, Justine Nagan, Teddy Leifer, Paul Taylor, Sally Jo Fifer, David Fanning; Editors: Aaron Wickenden and Steve JamesSound: Zak Pipe

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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

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My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon