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Kartemquin would like to congratulate Bill T. Jones, subject of our upcoming film A Good Man, on being named as a 2010 Kennedy Center Honoree. The prestigious award is bestowed upon individuals who have made worthy lifetime contributions to arts and culture by the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. The Center's Chairman David M. Rubenstein stated: "the inventive style and imaginative artistry of Bill T. Jones has had an invaluable impact on the varied landscapes of dance and theater." The other 2010 honorees are Sir Paul McCartney, Merle Haggard, Jerry Herman and Oprah Winfrey.

A Good Man follows Bill T. Jones as he attempts to create a new dance work commemorating the bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln. The film will be broadcast on PBS American Masters in 2011. Chicago audiences can catch a 'sneak preview' of the film introduced by director Gordon Quinn at the Chicago Humanities Festival on November 14th. Watch the trailer.

As of September 1, Mapping Stem Cell Research: Terra Incognita is now available to watch on Netflix via instant streaming. Maria Finitzo's Peabody Award-winning 2007 film puts a human face on the crucial debate over stem cell research. Watch it today!

Other Kartemquin documentaries available to watch instantly on Netflix include Milking the Rhino (watch here) and Hoop Dreams (watch here).

Tony and Janina's American Wedding, a Ruthless Films Production in association with Kartemquin Films, will have its first Chicago screenings in October, with a World premiere at the Chicago International Film Festival followed by a theatrical  premiere at the Gene Siskel Film Center. The new documentary is directed by Ruth Leitman.

The film is a feature length documentary that gets to the heart of the broken, red tape ridden U.S. immigration system. After 18 years in America, Tony and Janina Wasilewski's family is torn apart when Janina is deported back to Poland, taking their 6 year old son Brian with her.  Set on the backdrop of the Chicago political scene, and featuring Illinois Congressman Luis Gutierrez at the heart of the immigration reform movement, this film follows the Wasilewski's 3-year struggle to be reunited, as their Senator Barack Obama rises to the Presidency.  With a fresh perspective on the immigration conversation, this film tells the untold human rights story of Post-9/11, that every undocumented immigrant in America faces today, with the power to open the conversation for change.

Kartemquin's Gordon Quinn is Story Consultant on the project, Leslie Simmer is an Editor on the film and Jim Morrisette is the Colorist / On-line Editor.

The Chicago International Film Festival runs from October 7-21, with schedules yet to be announced. The Siskel Center screenings are on Friday October 22nd at 8pm and on Wednesday October 27th at 8pm. Get tickets and more information from Siskel Center.

Watch the trailer and follow the film on Facebook and Twitter.

On Tuesday, the trailer for Typeface was vaulted to the front page of YouTube thanks to one of the film's fans (read more about it here). Since this was a new experience for the film, we thought we'd share the stats on the impact this immediately had on our site traffic and sales, and also some thoughts on what it was like to have a mini-breakout into the mainstream away from the design, typography and letterpress community that has been such a huge supporter of the film from the start.

~ Before yesterday, the video only had a humble 1,679 views. In a single day, it became our YouTube channel's most watched video ever with 51,357 views (according to YouTube's analytics). It is still gaining large amounts of views today, though not at that pace. A number of our other films also received above average daily views as a result.

~ With those viewers came comments: from 0 to 50 in a single day (not counting obvious spam). Interestingly, the majority of these comments are from people who seem to have no discernible interest in the film's subject matter (or were even aware that there was a film) and so some of the comments were negative. A debate even seemed to break out between typography fans and casual viewers over the very validity of the project. This was new thing for Typeface, which has benefited previously from finding an adoring niche audience who have done a lot of positive marketing on our behalf, such as creating their own posters or spreading the word on twitter. Added to this were the many strange videos and friend requests we suddenly received. The perils of being popular...

~ Happily, YouTube also exposed us to typography lovers who hadn't yet found us. In a single day, we saw a traffic increase of +1,042.39% to the Typeface website, and a +733% increase in visits to the DVD's page in the Kartemquin store, resulting in one of our highest-ever sales days for DVDs (all proceeds of which go to outreach funds for the film and future Kartemquin documentaries). Not bad considering the DVD has been available for pre-order since April 28th 2010, is available on iTunes and Netflix, and has already screened over 50 times around the world.

~ The best part of all this? Karen Kavett, the fan who selected us for the YouTube homepage, told us on twitter that she hasn't even seen the film yet! She will soon though; we're sending her a free copy as a thank you.

So, overall we are of course extremely pleased by the greater exposure YouTube offered our film. What has been most exciting about bringing the film to the public is that each stage of growth has been as much led by our fan base as it has by our own efforts, and the YouTube impact is just the latest example of this. In that spirit, we're trying to embrace the crowd even further by launching a page where people interested in the film can request a screening near them. Check it out and hopefully we can bring Typeface to you!