Kartemquin Films
Documentaries on the Frontlines of Democracy
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- $18.99
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- $18.99
Publisher Description
How filmmaker-philosophers brought the dream of making documentaries and strengthening democracy to award-winning reality—with help from nuns, gang members, skateboarders, artists, disability activists, and more.
The evolution of Kartemquin Films—Peabody, Emmy, and Sundance-awarded and Oscar-nominated makers of such hits as Hoop Dreams and Minding the Gap—is also the story of U.S. independent documentary film over the last seventy years. Patricia Aufderheide reveals the untold story of how Kartemquin developed as an institution that confronts the brutal realities of the industry and society while empowering people to claim their right to democracy.
Kartemquin filmmakers, inspired by pragmatic philosopher John Dewey, made their studio a Chicago-area institution. Activists for a more public media, they boldly confronted in their own productions the realities of gender, race, and class. They negotiated the harsh terms and demands of commercial media, from 16mm through the streaming era, while holding fast to their democratic vision. Drawing on archival research, interviews, and personal experience, Aufderheide tells an inspiring story of how to make media that matters in a cynical world.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The Kartemquin production company "was an early trend-setter in the genre of socially engaged... documentary narrative films," according to this perceptive analysis. Aufderheide (Documentary Film), a communications professor at American University, discusses how former college classmates Gordon Quinn and Jerry Temaner founded the company in 1966 to tell stories "with and about working people and members of movements for social justice." Aufderheide is more interested in the issues undergirding Kartemquin's films than what went on behind the scenes, explaining that 1974's Trick Bag aimed to push back against "stereotypes about white, working-class bigotry," that 1983's The Last Pullman Car offered a snapshot of a labor movement in decline, and that 1994's Hoop Dreams sought to highlight the persistence of poverty beneath the gloss of neoliberalism. Historical background on the political developments documented in Kartemquin's films sheds light on the New Left's waning after the 1960s, and Aufderheide offers edifying insight into Kartemquin's intellectual underpinnings. For instance, she explains that Quinn and Temaner were influenced by philosopher John Dewey's belief that democracy depends on civilians uniting to address shared problems, and that their films might provide focal points around which such groups could organize. Documentary buffs will want to seek this out. Photos.
