Steve James' affiliation with Kartemquin began in 1987 with the start of production of Hoop Dreams, for which he served as director, producer, and co-editor. The film won every major critics award as well as a Peabody and Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award in 1995. The film earned James the Directors Guild of America Award and the MTV Movie Award’s "Best New Filmmaker." Recently, Hoop Dreams was selected for the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry, signifying the film’s enduring importance to American film history, and hailed by critic Roger Ebert as "the great American documentary."

Peter Gilbert is one of the filmmakers who made Hoop Dreams, serving as a Producer and Director of Photography. The film won numerous awards including The Sundance Film Festival Audience Award, Producers Guild of America, Independent Spirit Award, and The Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Award for Journalism. Hoop Dreams was on 100+ top ten lists for 1994. Also with Kartemquin and Steve James, he recently finished At the Death House Door which premiered at South by Southwest in 2008, and won awards at several other festivals following, including the inspiration award at Full Frame. It aired on the Independent Film Channel in May of 2008.

Artistic Director and founding member of Kartemquin Films, Gordon Quinn has been making documentaries for over 45 years. Roger Ebert, of the Chicago Sun Times, called his first film Home for Life (1966) "an extraordinarily moving documentary." With Home for Life Gordon established the direction he would take for the next four decades, making cinéma vérité films that investigate and critique society by documenting the unfolding lives of real people. 

Fenell Doremus has worked in documentary film since graduating from the University of Wisconsin with a BA in Sociology. She began her career as an Assistant Editor on the award-winning Hoop Dreams. She went on to serve as staff Producer at Kartemquin Films for the next eight years. While at Kartmequin, Doremus was Segment Producer and a Segment Editor (Palestinian story) of The New Americans. Hailed as "Totally engrossing...filled with many unexpected riches..." by The New York Times, the series was nationally broadcast on PBS in 2004 and won multiple awards at festivals worldwide.

For over thirty-five years, Jim Morrissette has had extensive experience as both a professional videographer and teacher, supporting his conviction that sharing and access are instrumental to the vitality of the independent production community. Jim has been the director of photography on numerous productions including: the award winning PBS documentary A Still Small Voice dealing with spiritual thought and mystic understanding, five episodes of Bill Kurtis' New Explorers, two episodes of Discovering Women for WGBH Boston, and Shadow Over Tibet, a documentary featuring the Dalai Lama. He was the principal videographer on the highly acclaimed six hour Frontline documentary The Farmer's Wife, which aired twice nationally on PBS.

Adam D. Singer began working with Kartemquin Films in 1989 spending 5 years on the critically acclaimed documentary Hoop Dreams and has continued his association with them for the past 19 years. He has worked on various productions, both nationally and internationally, as a producer, cameraman and sound recordist.

With Kartemquin and director Steve James he produced No Crossover: The Trial of Allen Iverson which had its world premiere at the SXSW Film Festival and aired as part of ESPN Films' 2010 International Documentary Association award-winning series "30 for 30." The film was selected for the IDOCS International Documentary Forum in Beijing, and also played at the Cleveland, Full Frame, Dallas, Nashville and Atlanta film festivals, among others. In 2011, No Crossover was selected by the U.S. Department of State for the American Documentary Showcase.