Oak Park, IL
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