October 20, 2011 2:46 pm
The Interrupters has been nominated for Best Documentary at the 2011 Gotham Independent Film Awards. The ceremony takes places on November 28th in New York. Read about the announcement in IndieWire, and on the Documentary Channel blog, which notes "I guess Best Ensemble is only for actors, otherwise “The Interrupters” might have scored two nods."
The film was also mentioned in Wired for being part of the ITVS / Mozilla "Living Docs" Hackathon in San Francisco last week. Director Steve James, Outreach coordinator Anton Seals and web designer Rick Waldron were one of six teams working in just 15 hours to create websites using HTML5 and Popcorn.js that would enhance and expand the scope and depth of their films online. The Interrupters website will feature "virtual shrines" that provide links to photos, obituaries, news clips and neighborhood maps. From Wired:
“We’ve been trying to figure out a way for us to do something interactive with the film that could connect with people affected by urban violence,” James said. “[This lets you] take one of the shrines people have built and put it online so that it can live forever and be added to. Because in the city of Chicago, they’re there for a couple weeks and then the cops wipe them away. Otherwise there would be shrines every foot you walk in certain neighborhoods.”
You can check out the prototype of their vision. We would love your feedback on how we can improve upon this idea.
The Interrupters opens today in Kansas City, Tucson, Santa Rosa, Grand Rapids, Burlington, and continues playing for it's eleventh week in Chicago (the film's 9th at ICE Chatham & Lawndale), and for a third week in Toronto. See the full screening calendar.
The film is also playing a number of regional festivals and community screenings worldwide throughout the fall. A free screening at Northwestern University featuring producer Alex Kotlowitz and interrupter Eddie Bocanegra this week saw a reported 100 people sadly turned away from a capacity theater! Interrupter Ameena Matthews is in Bergen, Norway for the Bergen International Film Festival this weekend and tweeted that she received a standing ovation last night.
Meanwhile, co-producer Zak Piper and interrupter Cobe Williams spoke at the biggest high school in Bermuda yesterday and showed clips from the film to 350 students, and will be speaking to another school today. Zak says: "It's been really great down here. The screening tomorrow night is sold out so they're adding another screening Saturday morning. The people here are hungry for answers to the gang violence problem in Bermuda. They ran an interview with Gary [Slutkin] on the front page of yesterday's daily paper."
We're glad the message is spreading.