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Steve
James

Steve James
Documentary Filmmaker
Oak Park, IL
2011 USA Fellow

This award was generously supported by Paul & Annette Smith.
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Steve James is a celebrated producer and director of several award-winning documentary films. His most renowned film, Hoop Dreams (1994), follows the lives of two high school students with dreams of becoming basketball players. The film won numerous honors, including a Peabody and a Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award in 1995, and was selected for the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry. James’s most recent film, The Interrupters (2011), portrays a year inside the lives of former gang members in Chicago who now intervene in violent conflicts. That film won the Grand Jury Prize at the Miami Film Festival and a Special Jury Award at Full Frame Documentary Festival.

 The Interrupters, 2011; photo credit Kartemquin Films The Interrupters, 2011; photo credit Kartemquin Films