In Progress

Thirty- five years ago, a life-changing piece of legislation prohibiting sex discrimination in federally funded education, including athletics, was enacted into law. By mandating equal opportunity, Title IX gave legislative muscle to those who were campaigning for more girls’ teams, better sports facilities for girls and women, and higher pay for their coaches. It set in motion far-reaching changes that would not only revolutionize America’s playing fields, but its political, social and cultural landscape as well.

Kartemquin Films, in partnership with Professor Kelly Belanger and the Center for the Study of Rhetoric in Society at Virginia Tech University, is currently developing (In)Visible Seasons, a feature-length documentary that will look at how and why change takes place in a democracy–by not only exploring how Title IX has altered the face of sports, but also by understanding the meaning of sports in the American experience.

(In)Visible Seasons will raise questions of inclusion and exclusion, fairness and tradition, principle and compromise… In the film we will come to understand the power of mentors and role models to inspire the acts of courage, sacrifice, and principle upon which our democracy depends. To be sure, this is a film about sports. But it is also a film about how a democracy achieves equality. In our country, who gets to play and who doesn’t is the yardstick by which we measure how close we are to achieving the goals of a democracy -a level playing field, be it at home, at work or at play.

The Mind's Eye is a feature-length documentary that takes us intimately inside the world of blindness through first-person encounters with an ensemble of articulate and expressive main characters. They include Richard Donald Smith, a blind flautist and music scholar who teaches at the United Nations School and travels independently to remote corners of Africa; Esref Armagan a congenitally blind visual artist from Turkey, whose uncanny grasp of perspective confounds scientists and art historians; Judy Druck, a 91-year old New Yorker who lectures her great-grandson’s preschool about "overcoming" disability, yet privately laments that she is "sick and bored!" of living without sight; and Christine Faltz, the blind mother of two blind children, whose suburban household presents a microcosm of blindness culture. Through these and other characters, we will probe questions about the sensory, cognitive and cultural aspects of blindness.