An Interview with Pat Aufderheide, author of Kartemquin Films: Documentaries on the Frontlines of Democracy Photo by Jean Tsien
Behind Kartemquin’s new door is almost six decades of history. How did Kartemquin start, why did it last, and what does it stand for? Here’s our interview with Pat Aufderheide in which we ask her to share more about why she decided to write the book and the many reasons to read it. Enjoy!
How did you first hear about Kartemquin films?
I had just been hired as the cultural editor of In These Times, the democratic socialist newspaper, and I arrived with a reputation as a regionally-noted film critic, so I was also writing for The Chicago Reader. Every once in a while Roger Ebert would give me a film to review, if he thought I’d be nicer to it—he was a very generous person.
Gordon Quinn, who I’d bumped into socially, came over to explain to me what he thought was important for the cultural editor of a democratic socialist paper to write about. He argued that independent documentary filmmaking could be a voice and support for democracy, and he introduced me to the great philosopher John Dewey. Dewey, who had inspired the mission of Kartemquin, argued that democracy was ultimately only as real as the people who could organize as publics—groups of people who identify problems they shared, even when they shared nothing else, and could pressure the powerful. Dewey saw communication as the make-or-break feature of democratic agency. For Gordon, newspaper journalism, independent filmmaking and public media of all kinds (including public access and public TV), were all sites where people could make media for democracy.
Well, sign me up, I thought. I had wandered around the American left without finding a home for quite a while, and I was genuinely joyful to have come home philosophically, both at In These Times and at Kartemquin. Gordon’s vision was very close to the one that In These Times’ founder, James Weinstein, had as well. They became close friends as well.
Both Gordon Quinn and his then-girlfriend Meg Gerken became good friends to both my husband Steve Schwartzman and me. We became drawn into the world of Kartemquin filmmakers and their projects.
Do you have a favorite Kartemquin story?
As I was interviewing more than 40 people for the book, I treasured not only the big stories—how the 1970s collective actually worked or huge projects like Hoop Dreams or The New Americans got made in the days before all our digital doodads—but also the little ones. So many people had stories of the kitchen, whether it was the long discussions an intern might have with a famous filmmaker, or a wry memory–from more than one woman–about the way the guys would leave stuff in the sink. There’s a photo in the book of the early days of the collective, which featured a lot of women, and everyone’s laughing but Gordon. I found out they were all laughing because Gordon was the only man who showed up for the photo shoot.
And I loved finding out the challenges of getting important work done under difficult conditions. It really showed me how profoundly people have been committed to Kartemquin’s mission of telling these stories. For instance, The New Americans, the 7-hour long series following several sets of immigrants from when they make the decision to come to America to their settling in, took years and years to get made. There were chunks of time where there was no funding. But the lives of the people being followed didn’t stop, of course. So there came a moment when the Mexican family was approved to immigrate. The team had to film the departure; it was crucial to the logic of the project that we see them when they’re still in their homes, so that we see what they are giving up. The producers, Renee Tajima-Peña and Evangeline Griego, decided to fly down with their own money, and Gordon came along to shoot. As they were getting set up, he said, “Who’s doing sound?” They all looked at each other. So Gordon gave a quick tutorial on sound, and away they went. The material they got includes one of the iconic scenes from the film, when little Pedrito leaves his elementary school teacher in tears. It still is a heartbreaker. And it wouldn’t have happened if each of those people hadn’t decided to go on a zero budget.
What’s one thing you want readers to take away from this book?
Of course I want them to see the way documentaries really can be intertwined with democracy, and also what it takes to make that happen. But I would also like for readers to see how Kartemquin has been a formative experience for so many people, and how they have taken its ideals into the many different careers they have pursued. Kartemquinites have not only gone further into the business, as Justine Nagan did when she left to lead POV, the public TV indie series, or Tim Horsburgh did—he’s now a VP at NatGeo promoting terrific films like The Territory, or the way Bing Liu did as a major Los Angeles filmmaker. They have also become nonprofit leaders, like Greg Leroy, who founded Good Jobs First. They became teachers of the next generation of filmmakers, like Judy Hoffman at the University of Chicago and Dinesh Das Sabu at Marquette University. They went into helping professions and into other arts organizations, like Jim Fetterley did at UCLA’s Hammer Museum, which “believes in the promise of art and ideas to illuminate our lives and build a more just world,” and Gita Saedi Kiely did in leading FilmAid. Kartemquin was the place where they learned that ideals can become reality.
Marcy McCall ended up working in Hollywood, and she pushed back on many bad behaviors, including #MeToo behaviors, before it was a thing. “There were things I just couldn’t stand,” she told me, “because Kartemquin gave me a compass. I absorbed that. It was about being ethical, especially with the story and subject matter. I had that lens, this ethic that I absorbed from them.”
Will the book be offered in various formats (e.g., audiobook, large print, etc.?)
University of Chicago Press is making it available in all formats. And Kartemquin lovers also get a special 30% discount, using the code UCPSAVE30 at checkout on the U of California site, which makes the price about $19.
What relevance might a reader who’s not a filmmaker or documentary buff find in this book?
This is also a story about Chicago and its institutions, of course. Kartemquin’s story would not happen without its relationships with universities such as University of Chicago, Columbia College, and DePaul. Its most famous projects would not have happened without the steadfast support of the MacArthur Foundation. The vibrant network of media producers in Chicago, which is remarkably collaborative, has sustained Kartemquin; work-for-hire has often kept the doors open. And of course there are arts organizations, like Facets, Media Burn, CAN, and public broadcasting. This book is a peek into how businesses in the arts have worked and worked together with other parts of the Chicago economy over decades.
And it’s a story about independent film and its role in shaping public knowledge and discourse. For instance, Kartemquin along with many other organizations worked for a decade to create the Independent Television Service, which as part of public TV now co-produces more than 40 documentaries a year for public broadcasting. Kartemquin’s films have played an important role in stimulating better conversations about important issues. The Interrupters was really important for many similar initiatives in other cities to connect to each other, a process in which everyone became stronger. The Homestretch has had a powerful role in boosting local and regional support for homeless-student programs in K-12.
Finally, it’s a story about race, class and privilege in America. Kartemquin was founded to address the way all these things work systemically to shape our realities, and to enable democratic change for a more just society. At the same time, as a small business dedicated not to profit but to an ideal, its efforts have been constrained by exactly those things. Kartemquin offered many opportunities for working class kids like Zac Piper and Maggie Bowman to work in film and on films that matter. But it has also struggled to be able to have a truly diverse team, for all the systemic reasons that its films also look at. It has often asked above-and-beyond of everyone involved, even when they are making films about labor rights in America. Kartemquin’s efforts to be the change we all want to see are important to look at, because these efforts and their limits help us see why we need to push for systemic change, as well as for change in our own situations.
Looking toward the future from the perspective of the past, what do you see as Kartemquin’s importance and relevance in documentary and beyond?
As documentary has become ruthlessly commercialized, and as reality television has turned ever weirder, the example of Kartemquin’s kind of filmmaking is really important. Kartemquin has steadfastly resisted the easy corruption of uplift documentaries, which patronize their subjects and turn them into excuses for us not to look at systemic reasons why people are in such situations. It’s avoided sentimentalism and moralizing, even as its filmmakers deal with big issues like homelessness and gender discrimination and disabilities and post-traumatic stress. It’s done this because it’s anchored to an ideal, a confidence that building publics is possible with communication, and that democracy at base is held accountable by its publics.
It’s also important because Kartemquin has never just been a place where people make movies. It’s been a place where the filmmakers and the staff are also citizens of their film community, their geographic community, their business and political community. Kartemquin’s imprimatur stands for something. Kartemquin was one of the first endorsers of the Documentary Accountability Working Group’s best practices in ethics of care in documentary. It was also an early endorser of the Archival Producers Alliance’s ethical guidelines on generative AI in documentary, which is about to be released. These are civic acts within our field, and that kind of work makes us all stronger.
As you look back on writing the book, what stands out?
I could never have done this project without the extraordinary generosity of everyone involved, which to me was another testimony to what kind of institution all these people helped to build. I interviewed Gordon so many times I lost count. Steve James—who everyone celebrated as someone who has always given back to Kartemquin generously—helped me time and time again with information, connections, images. Elise Schierbeeck never stopped finding archival material for me, even after she left Kartemquin; from time to time, Carolyn Faber, who was the one who architected the Kartemquin archives project, would also help out. And there was so much more. Everyone I interviewed made time for me without prompting, and they would often say it was a joy to talk about Kartemquin. It even extended to the Washington University of St. Louis, where Kartemquin archives now reside. Andy Uhrich there was in the middle of cataloging the roomsful of stuff when I asked to see the archive, and he spent days pre-sifting for me so that my time there was well spent.