For over 40 years, Kartemquin Films has been making documentaries that examine and critique society through the stories of real people. Kartemquin’s first film in 1966, Home For Life – a powerful chronicle of two elderly people entering a home for the aged, established the direction the organization would take over the next four decades. With a record number of films currently in development and production, Kartemquin is poised to continue this legacy for years to come. Additionally, Kartemquin was recently honored to receive one of eight international 2007 MacArthur Awards for Creative and Effective Institutions.
Kartemquin’s most recent documentary, At the Death House Door, premiered at the 2008 SXSW film festival, with an extensive festival run and national broadcast on the Independent Film Channel following. Just prior, Mapping Stem Cell Research: Terra Incognita put a human face on stem cell research and was broadcast internationally on PBS, the CBC, and SBS Australia in 2007-2008. Golub: Late Works are the Catastrophes, which revisits the American artist Leon Golub 13 years after Kartemquin’s initial film on his work (Golub, 1990), was broadcast in 2006 across the country on P.O.V.’s “True Lives” series. Interweaving scenes of Golub creating one of his monumental canvasses, archival footage, interviews with museum-goers, and TV news, the film challenges us to question our connection to violence in the modern world, and to reassess the relationship between art and society. Golub/Spero, a DVD featuring Golub: Late Works as well as two films about his wife, artist Nancy Spero, was released in February 2006.
“Golub strikes me as being virtually perfect…it conveys the exhilarating sense that art is inseparable from both the world that engenders it and the world that receives it.”
– Jonathan Rosenbaum, The Chicago Reader on Golub
In 2004, PBS aired the groundbreaking seven-hour miniseries The New Americans, which captures the complexities of contemporary immigration by taking viewers intimately inside the lives of immigrant families from five different countries. The New Americans follows this diverse group of immigrants and refugees for four years, from before they leave their homelands through their first tumultuous years in America.
2002 marked the release of two important Kartemquin films. The feature documentary Stevie, which won the Cinematography Award at the 2003 Sundance Film Festival and played at theaters nationwide, considers the story of a troubled young man and the director’s multifaceted relationship with him. Refrigerator Mothers, which explores the untold stories of an entire generation of women who raised autistic children under the dehumanizing shadow of professionally-promoted mother blame, made its television premiere on PBS’s P.O.V. series and is now available on DVD. In 2001, Kartemquin premiered 5 Girls, also on P.O.V. The film follows two years in the lives of five resilient teenage girls who, in spite of the many challenges and stresses in their lives, figure out how to thrive and triumph over adversity.
In 1998 Kartemquin released Vietnam, Long Time Coming. The film follows a bicycle trip organized by World Team Sports to bring disabled and able-bodied Vietnamese and American veterans together on a journey of reconciliation, athletic achievement and emotional discovery. Broadcast on NBC, the film won a National Emmy and the Best Documentary award from the Director’s Guild of America.
“Hoop Dreams is amazingly rich, a terrific movie that’s as complex, nuanced and unpredictable as life itself.”
–J. Hoberman, Premiere Magazine on Hoop Dreams
Kartemquin’s best known film, Hoop Dreams, won every major critics prize and journalism award in 1995 and was named on over 150 “ten best” lists. The film examines the complex role basketball plays in the lives of two inner-city high school players. After garnering the Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival, Hoop Dreams was released theatrically by Fine Line Features and became the highest grossing documentary at that time and one of highest-rated documentaries broadcast on PBS.
Our films have been broadcast nationally (on PBS, NBC, Cinemax, The Sundance Channel, The Learning Channel and other outlets), continue to be distributed both nationally and internationally, and include ambitious outreach and education campaigns. By engaging the larger public and policy-makers in the process of genuine learning and understanding, Kartemquin continues to make films that can lead to real social change.
The deadline for Summer internships at Kartemquin has passed. Applications are currently being accepted for the Fall.