Steve James’s A Compassionate Spy is an unexpectedly charitable portrait of a man who betrayed his country for a higher cause. Specifically in the case of physicist Ted Hall—still a teenage undergrad at Harvard when, in 1944, he was tasked to help develop the atomic bomb—the greater cause of world peace. But unlike far more famous contemporaneous “traitors” Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, executed in 1953, Hall managed to do something even more remarkable than simply smuggle secrets to the Soviets—he escaped accountability for his actions. FBI surveillance aside, he went on to enjoy a surprisingly normal life with his adoring […]
by Lauren Wissot on Jan 6, 2023When confronted by the press about Chicago’s overwhelming political corruption, city politicians often shrug and curtly concede: “That’s Chicago politics.” The city’s corruption is so native and unyielding that it just “is what it is,” has been and always will be. In Steve James’ five-part docuseries City So Real, a buoyant portrait of Chicago loosely wrapped around the 2019 mayoral election and the murder trial of Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke, the city’s denizens justify an array of their problems with that same self-referential and self-enabling sentiment, “That’s just Chicago for you.” But the city’s 2019 mayoral election saw […]
by A.E. Hunt on Oct 29, 2020People are “natural scriptwriters,” Claire Simon noted towards the beginning of what turned out to be a surprisingly lively discussion between the French documentarian and the US’s own Steve James about one of the hottest topics in the doc industry today: serialized storytelling. The setting was an intimate theater at De Brakke Grond (the longtime headquarters of IDFA DocLab, where this year’s Humanoid Cookbook theme whimsically allowed for browsing a menu before ordering, or rather requesting, VR experience time slots). The moderator was film programmer Sean Farnel. The two veteran directors opened by acknowledging the biggest difference between feature films […]
by Lauren Wissot on Nov 24, 2018The program for the 31st International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (November 14th – 25th) — the first under the new artistic directorship of Syrian documentary filmmaker Orwa Nyrabia — feels equal parts familiar and fresh. On the one hand, as in years past, it’s hard not to be overwhelmed by the sheer size of the world’s largest nonfiction film festival. Once again the fest will include exceptional industry events like the IDFA Forum (and Docs for Sale, the IDFA Bertha Fund, IDFA Academy, etc.), competitions (14 in total), and more meet-and-greets and parties than one can reasonably attend. (Do I […]
by Lauren Wissot on Nov 13, 2018Steve James has never shied away from going big. From his 1994 breakthrough, the near-three-hour Hoop Dreams, through long-players like Stevie and The Interrupters, the filmmaker has never been afraid to blow well past documentary’s traditional 90-minute mark. (He’s also played ball, as with 2016’s Oscar-nominated Abacus: Small Enough to Jail, which clocks in at a brisk 88.) Still, even for James, America to Me is ambitious. It’s his second dalliance with TV, after 2004’s The New Americans, spanning 10 hour-long episodes, which begin on Starz on Aug. 26. But it’s not just size that matters. It’s the scope, and the […]
by Matt Prigge on Sep 25, 2018Bing Liu’s first feature documentary, Minding the Gap, draws upon a deep trove of skater tapes he’d kept since his teen years. The film tracks three male skaters growing up (or failing to) in economically dispossessed Rockford, IL. Two are the director’s old friends: in between countless beers, Zack is introduced as he prepares to have a child he clearly isn’t ready for with his girlfriend Nina. Keire doesn’t have any attachments beyond family, but finding his first job is a struggle; the ultimate goal is to get out. The third character is the filmmaker himself. What all three subjects have in […]
by Vadim Rizov on Aug 15, 2018Here’s a great video from Criterion in which documentary filmmaker Steve James (The Keeper, Stevie, Hoop Dreams) discusses how he was influenced by Robert Altman’s Nashville. He begins by noting that your most influential films are the ones you see when you’re young and falling in love with cinema, and he then goes on to say that he wasn’t interested in documentary filmmaking when he encountered Altman’s work. But there were aspects of Nashville that impressed him — including, yes, the zooms! — as well as notions of structure that wound up rippling into films like The Interruptors.
by Scott Macaulay on Jun 6, 2017Steve James’ documentary, Abacus: Small Enough to Jail, is at once a heartfelt portrait of a close-knit family facing overwhelming adversity and an infuriating indictment of our U.S. justice system gone seriously awry. The film follows the Chinese immigrant Sung family, founding owners and operators of the Abacus Federal Savings Bank down in NYC’s Chinatown, who in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis found themselves locked in a half-decade battle with spotlight-loving Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance, Jr. Though the bank had one of the lowest default rates in the country (with only nine out of 3,000 loans defaulting!), the […]
by Lauren Wissot on May 15, 2017Months ago, I got the crazy idea to write, produce and direct my first documentary. I wasn’t completely unrealistic — I knew enough to start small with a short, micro-budgetfilm. I also knew I could count on a supportive network of documentary filmmakers — including pros such as Doug Block, Marshall Curry, Laura Nix, Tracy Droz Tragos, Robert Greene, and others — to help guide me through the process. Later in this piece, I’ll share some of their invaluable wisdom. But first, here’s a bit about my film and my process so far. I had been on the lookout for a subject that […]
by Paula Bernstein on Aug 25, 2016Cinema Eye, the nonfiction film organization behind the annual Cinema Eye Honors, will present the 2016 Legacy Award to American Movie, Chris Smith’s 1999 chronicle of an independent filmmaker pursuing his passion project. Smith will accept the award on behalf of the film at the Cinema Eye Honors Lunch, on Tuesday, January 12, 2016 in Manhattan. Award-winning documentary filmmaker Steve James (Hoop Dreams, The Interrupters, Life Itself) will serve as host and master of ceremonies for the 2016 Cinema Eye Honors, which will be held Wednesday, January 13, 2016 at the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens. Meanwhile, today marks the second day of […]
by Paula Bernstein on Dec 10, 2015