Now We Live on Clifton

Kartemquin's Jim Morrissette and Julie Englander met with 7th and 8th grade video students at the Eli Whitney/LVCDC Community School in Little Village on Thursday, where they screened clips from Now We Live on Clifton, The New Americans, and a few of Jim's PSAs, and talked about working as documentary filmmakers. The Little Village community and LVCDC had been the subjects of some Kartemquin filming in the winter, and this class was a great opportunity to demonstrate a little bit more of what Kartemquin does, as well as introduce ourselves to a new generation of video fans!

From The Chicago Reader:

Urban Rural Wild: Chicagoland Gridded/Revised

In conjunction with an exhibit of the same title opening at I Space on September 9, filmmaker Thomas Comerford curated this program of six films and videos on Chicago geography. The first film, Kartemquin Films’ Now We Live on Clifton (1974) follows three young boys in gentrifying Lincoln Park; their mundane outdoor horseplay gains an acidic edge when one kid tells how “regular” families like his can’t afford the newly rehabbed homes. Conrad O. Nelson’s beautifully Halsted Street (1934) finds contrasts between rich and poor in the street’s geography, and Brandon Doherty’s The Presence of Absence (2002) makes still photos of vacant lots and decrepit buildings more haunting by animating them at various speeds. 70 min.