Steve James

Steve James

Born: March 8, 1958
in Hampton, Virginia, USA
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Steve James is an American film producer and director of several documentaries, including the award-winning Hoop Dreams and Stevie. He is also the director of the 1997 feature film Prefontaine. His newest film, The Interrupters, a portrayal of a year inside the lives of former gang members in Chicago who now intervene in violent conflicts, will be released in 2011 after premiering at the Sundance Film Festival. The film is his sixth feature length collaboration with his long-time filmmaking home, the non-profit Chicago production studio Kartemquin Films, and is also his fifth feature to be accepted into the Sundance Film Festival.

He is a graduate of Southern Illinois University Carbondale, studying with Charles Harpole. His work, he tells journalist Robert K. Elder in an interview for The Film That Changed My Life, was strongly influenced by the film Harlan County, USA.

There’ve been many documentaries over the years that have powerfully impacted me. I think this one came along at the time when I was more interested in being a feature filmmaker than a documentary filmmaker. So it came along at the beginning of a process of moving from an interest in feature film to documentaries, and that’s where my career has taken me. It came along at the right time for me. It helped me see, “Ah, this is more what I want to do.”

Steve James also pulls influence from the original definition of the term cinema verite as it applies to the Rouch/Morin method of filmmaking. Just as with Rouch and Morin, the “people on camera and we in the audience are continually reminded that a film is being made, that we are watching a film.” We are reminded of this through James’ presence on screen as well as his cinematic editing techniques, in order to obtain, what he believes is a more accurate depiction of truth.

Description above from the Wikipedia article Steve James (producer), licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia​

Movies for Steve James...

Life Itself
Title: Life Itself
Character: Self - Filmmaker / Narrator (voice)
Released: July 4, 2014
Type: Movie
The surprising and entertaining life of renowned film critic and social commentator Roger Ebert (1942-2013): his early days as a freewheeling bachelor and Pulitzer Prize winner, his famously contentious partnership with Gene Siskel, his life-altering marriage, and his brave and transcendent battle with cancer.
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These Amazing Shadows
Title: These Amazing Shadows
Character: Self
Released: January 22, 2011
Type: Movie
Tells the history and importance of The National Film Registry, a roll call of American cinema treasures that reflects the diversity of film, and indeed the American experience itself.
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Heartbeats
Title: Heartbeats
Character: Party Lover (uncredited)
Released: September 29, 2010
Type: Movie
Francis is a young gay man, Marie is a young straight woman and the two of them are best friends -- until the day the gorgeous Nicolas walks into a Montreal coffee shop. The two friends, instantly and equally infatuated, compete for Nicolas' indeterminate affections, a conflict that climaxes when the trio visit the vacation home of Nicolas' mother. The frothy comedy unfolds through narrative, fantasy sequences and confessional monologues.
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No Crossover: The Trial of Allen Iverson
Title: No Crossover: The Trial of Allen Iverson
Character: Self / Narrator (voice)
Released: April 13, 2010
Type: Movie
Director Steve James returns to his home town of Hampton, Virginia to tell the story of how the trial of a young basketball star left a city divided.
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Title: Supernatural
Character: Steve James
Released: September 13, 2005
Type: TV
When they were boys, Sam and Dean Winchester lost their mother to a mysterious and demonic supernatural force. Subsequently, their father raised them to be soldiers. He taught them about the paranormal evil that lives in the dark corners and on the back roads of America ... and he taught them how to kill it. Now, the Winchester brothers crisscross the country in their '67 Chevy Impala, battling every kind of supernatural threat they encounter along the way.
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Stevie
Title: Stevie
Character: Himself
Released: September 9, 2002
Type: Movie
In 1995 Director Steve James (Hoop Dreams) returned to rural Southern Illinois to reconnect with Stevie Fielding, a troubled young boy he had been an 'Advocate Big Brother' to ten years earlier.
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Hoop Dreams
Title: Hoop Dreams
Character: Narrator (voice)
Released: September 12, 1994
Type: Movie
Every school day, African-American teenagers William Gates and Arthur Agee travel 90 minutes each way from inner-city Chicago to St. Joseph High School in Westchester, Illinois, a predominately white suburban school well-known for the excellence of its basketball program. Gates and Agee dream of NBA stardom, and with the support of their close-knit families, they battle the social and physical obstacles that stand in their way. This acclaimed documentary was shot over the course of five years.