Kartemquin Films: Documentaries for Democracy

Kartemquin Films: Documentaries for Democracy is a two-day conference that celebrates the legendary Chicago film production house. Over more than 50 years, Kartemquin has incubated generations of talented storytellers whose award-winning work has focused on topics such as the legacy of the Vietnam war, health care policy, education reform, police and the community, the death penalty, and immigrant communities.  

On Friday, October 4, Kartemquin co-founder Gordon Quinn introduces highlights from Kartemquin’s historic works, and Kevin Shaw introduces a screening of his film about education politics in Chicago, Let the Little Light Shine (2022). Saturday, October 5 features a day of discussions with filmmakers, activists, archivists, and scholars, as well as a screening of Kartemquin’s Oscar-shortlisted ’63 Boycott (2017). Renowned scholar of documentary film Patricia Aufderheide, whose new book is Kartemquin Films: Documentaries on the Frontlines of Democracy (2024), opens the conference.  

The conference charts Kartemquin’s evolution from an academic project to an activist collective to its signature style of social-issue, humanist films and its support for emerging documentary filmmakers. Along with discussions of films, Documentaries for Democracy also showcases Kartemquin’s role in media activism, and relationships with leading Chicago institutions, including the University of Chicago, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, labor unions, and the Community Film Workshop.  

Presented by Kartemquin Films, Cinema & Media Studies, the Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture, the Franke Institute for the Humanities, the Chicago Center for Contemporary Theory, the Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry, the Pozen Center for Human Rights, the Karla Scherer Center for the Study of American Culture, and Film Studies Center