By Ray Pride Pride@moviecitynews.com

Kartemquin Pairs With Fandor For Distribution Of Doc Library

Posted Wednesday, November 11th, 2015 - Comments Off on Kartemquin Pairs With Fandor For Distribution Of Doc Library
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Fandor, the leading curated subscription streaming service for independent and international films, announced today that they will jointly release over thirty films made and distributed by legendary Chicago documentary production studio Kartemquin Films, sixteen of which debut today. The move underscores Fandor and Kartemquin’s commitment to providing extraordinary cinema to an ever-growing audience of film enthusiasts.

“I have greatly admired the remarkable work of Kartemquin Films for decades,” stated Jonathan Marlow, co-founder and Chief Content Officer of Fandor. “We are absolutely delighted to add their phenomenal documentaries to the Fandor service.”

The films in this partnership include the digital premieres of many rare and underexposed early works from Kartemquin, who celebrate their 50th anniversary in 2016, and are best known for producing the Academy Award-nominated Hoop Dreams, the multi-award-winning The Trials of Muhammad Ali and 2014’s Roger Ebert biography Life Itself. Highlights include:

  • Kartemquin’s very first film, Home for Life, a classic cinéma verité depiction of the experiences of two elderly people in their first month at an elderly home which a young Roger Ebert called “extraordinarily moving.”
  • Inquiring Nuns, a playful and poignant cinematic homage to Jean Rouch and Edgar Morin’s Chronicle of a Summer in which the filmmakers and two nuns take to the streets of 1968 Chicago asking citizens “are you happy?”
  • Landmark films from Kartemquin’s 1970’s “Collective” period when the organization operated as a left-wing-feminist collective of teachers, union organizers, and filmmakers — including the blistering critique of the corporatization of women’s healthcare, The Chicago Maternity Center Story (1976).
  • Several films that depict labor struggles, union organizing, and the plight of American industrial workers in the 1970s and 1980s, including The Last Pullman Car (1983).
  • The film Golub (1988), a portrait of the iconoclastic political painter, Leon Golub (which Jonathan Rosenbaum described as a “virtually perfect… masterpiece”) and its 2004 follow-up Golub: Late Works are the Catastrophes, which offers a probing and sobering addendum to the original.
  • Grassroots Chicago (1991), a series of vignettes of community organizers that was the debut short film of legendary documentary director Steve James, made during his time working on Kartemquin’s Hoop Dreams.
  • The International Documentary Association award-winning The New Americans (2004), an epic seven-hour series following five international families over 3 years before and after they immigrate to the USA, which may just be Kartemquin’s most masterful work.

“It’s a pleasure to have so many of our classic films digitally released for the first time as a collection on Fandor where we know they will be well received by a sophisticated and engaged cinephile audience. This is a great way for anyone who has been curious about what came before our more famous recent works to see both the points of continuity and evolution in Kartemquin’s style of filmmaking ahead of our 50th anniversary in 2016,” says Kartemquin’s Director of Communications and Distribution, Tim Horsburgh.

For a complete list of available films, visit:
https://www.fandor.com/distributors/kartemquin-films 

About Kartemquin
A collaborative center for documentary media makers who seek to foster a more engaged and empowered society, in 2016 Kartemquin will celebrate 50 years of sparking democracy through documentary.

A revered resource within the film community on issues of fair use, ethics, story and civic discourse, Kartemquin is international recognized for crafting quality documentaries backed by audience and community engagement strategies, and for its innovative media arts community programs.

The organization has won every major critical and journalistic prize, including multiple Emmy, Peabody, duPont-Columbia and Robert F. Kennedy journalism awards, Independent Spirit, IDA, PGA and DGA awards, and an Oscar nomination.

Their recent films include Steve James’ Life Itself; Usama Alshaibi’s American Arab; Bill Siegel’s The Trials of Muhammad Ali; Kirsten Kelly and Anne de Mare’s The Homestretch; Joanna Rudnick’s On Beauty; Dan Rybicky and Aaron Wickenden’s Almost There; Brent Huffman’s Saving Mes Aynak; and Hard Earned, a six-hour series for Al Jazeera America.

Kartemquin is a 501(c)3 not-for-profit organization based in Chicago. www.kartemquin.com

About Fandor
Fandor streams the largest handpicked collection of the most-talked-about independent films from around the world to an audience of film lovers. To support the full lifecycle of a film, Fandor maintains initiatives across all critical stages of the filmmaking process, partnering with educators, filmmakers, festivals and distributors. Fandor continues to grow its distribution on iOS and Android and across multiple streaming platforms, including smart TVs through Roku, Chromecast and other connected devices.

 

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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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There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

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

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~ David Simon