Kartemquin Films

History

Kartemquin Educational Films was started in 1966 by three University of Chicago graduates, Gordon Quinn, Jerry Temaner, and Stan Karter. The company was started to make politically engaged and socially charged documentary films that would use Quinn and Temaner's thesis Cinematic Social Inquiry as a base point.

Kartemquin's first film in 1966, Home for Life—a chronicle of two elderly people entering a home for the aged—established the direction the organization would take over the next four decades. After the initial success of the late 1960s films Kartemquin evolved into a film collective producing films such as The Chicago Maternity Center Story and the Taylor Chain films. However, after these and some other films were released the collective disbanded in the late 1970s due to differing opinions on the direction the company should head. After the dissolution of the collective, co-founders Gordon Quinn and Jerry Blumenthal (who died in late 2014) pushed the organization to its current model, producing high quality works that still had a political edge and mentoring a new generation of young documentary makers. They continued releasing social-issue documentaries (The Last Pullman Car, Golub) largely for public television and the educational market into the 1990s.

Kartemquin's best known film, the Oscar-nominated Hoop Dreams, won several major critics prizes and journalism awards in 1995 and was named on over 150 "ten best" lists. Filmmakers Steve James, Peter Gilbert and Frederick Marx examined the complex role basketball plays in the lives of two inner-city high school players. After receiving the Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival, Hoop Dreams was released theatrically by Fine Line Features and became the highest grossing documentary at that time and one of highest-rated documentaries broadcast on PBS.

Since Hoop Dreams, Kartemquin has continued producing films that examine and critique society by following the stories of real people. At the Death House Door premiered at SXSW, and went on to win awards at Full Frame and other festivals. Their documentary, Terra Incognita: Mapping Stem Cell Research, follows Dr. Jack Kessler of Northwestern University in his search for a cure for spinal cord injuries using embryonic stem cells. Other notable documentaries have included: The New Americans, a seven-hour miniseries for PBS that follows immigrant families from five different countries; Stevie; Refrigerator Mothers; 5 Girls; and Vietnam, Long Time Coming. In 2007, Kartemquin Films received the MacArthur Award for Creative and Effective Institutions. In 2009, Kartemquin's Executive Director Justine Nagan directed the film Typeface.

The 2010s saw Kartemquin producing films at the fastest rate yet. With several award-winning documentaries being released in these years, including The Homestretch, Life Itself, The Trials of Muhammad Ali, and In the Game.