Saving Mes Aynak by director Brent Huffman won both the Grand Prize and the Audience Award at ICRONOS, the International Archaeology Film Festival of Bordeaux, France this past Sunday. This marks the 23rd award the film has earned since its release in 2014. In October the film won the Grand Prix from AGON, the 10th International Meeting of Archaeological Film. In awarding Saving Mes Aynak with the Grand Prix, AGON lauded the film for demonstrating: "This archaeology is not just about distant civilizations lost in time, Mes Aynak is about how archaeology, politics, economics, imperialism, terrorism and cultural identity are in conflict right here and now." Continued

WTTW, Chicago's premier public television station, will broadcast Kartemquin's 1998 Vietnam, Long Time Coming at 3PM on Sunday November 13, in honor of Veterans Day and Kartemquin's 50th anniversary. Continued

Documentary filmmakers will gather at the School of Cinematic Arts at DePaul University for “Verité,” two days of events that offer an in-depth look at the filmmaking process. The events will feature three filmmakers from Kartemquin: Dinesh Sabu, director of Unbroken Glass; Gordon Quinn, co-founder and Artistic Director of Kartemquin and Emmy Award-winning editor Leslie Simmer. Events will be held Oct. 28-29 in DePaul’s Daley Building, 247 S. State St. Admission is free and open to the public, but seating is limited. EVENT SCHEDULE: Unbroken Glass Screening, Oct. 28 5PM: Continued

We're one week away from Kartemquin's Fall Festival Nov. 2-4 in partnership with ArcLight Cinemas Chicago! The festival features groundbreaking work from our filmmaker development programs, Chicago Premieres of newly completed films Unbroken Glass and City of Trees, and never-before-seen previews of docs-in-progress America to Me, Dilemma of Desire, and Eating Up Easter. Continued

The filmmakers behind City of Trees worked with 275 hours of footage, comprised of the individual stories of 12 subjects involved in a "green" job-training program in the communities hardest hit by the recession, before completing the final 76 minute film. A portion of their creative process took place at our Kartemquin Lab program, during which members of the Kartemquin community gather to discuss and critique the work-in-progress of an independent filmmaker. Continued

Raising Bertie, the intimate, visually rich and compassionate portrait of three African American boys coming of age in rural Bertie County, North Carolina, had its Chicago Premiere yesterday to a sold-out crowd at the Chicago International Film Festival. Following the screening, Director Margaret Byrne, Producer Ian Kibbe and Director of Photography Jon Stuyvesant discussed the making of the film–particularly the importance of the relationships they have (and continually sustain) with their subjects; rural youth and communities in America and their goals for the film's impact campaign. Continued

Abacus: Small Enough to Jail, the latest film by director Steve James premiered at the Chicago International Film Festival on October 18 to a sold-out crowd. Following the screening, members of the Sung family including Vera Sung, Thomas Sung and Hwei Lin Sung were met with an extended standing ovation as they took the stage with director Steve James and producer Mark Mitten. Below are some of the most memorable quotes from the post-screening discussion: "The meaning of the word 'justice' is how much you can afford...for individuals who are innocent, a lot of the time they've lost their liberty and some of them have lost their lives because of the indiscretion and use of power by those who have authority." –Thomas Sung Continued

Participant Media announced today at MIPCOM that it has developed, financed and produced Kartemquin's new project America to Me created by renowned filmmaker Steve James. Participant's first unscripted series, America to Me follows a year in suburban Chicago’s Oak Park and River Forest High School, one of the country’s most exemplary and diverse public schools, as students, teachers and administrators grapple with decades-long racial and educational inequities. Continued

Abacus: Small Enough to Jail, the latest film by director Steve James will have its European Premiere at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA), the world's largest documentary film festival. The festival runs November 16-27. The film will screen in the Masters program section of the festival, which shows new documentaries by renowned documentarians. Abacus will be in the company of new films by Errol Morris, Claire Simon and Lucy Walker. James' short The Ride of Their Lives, made for The New Yorker Presents will also screen in the Masters program at IDFA. Continued

Newcity Film has named twelve Kartemquin associates to its Film 50 2016 List: Chicago's Screen Gems. This year, NewCity has devoted its list to honoring artists rather than producers, programmers and all-round facilitators: "It's essential to highlight bold figures who make work year after year, work that surprises or sustains, as well as supernovas who startle suddenly with vision or verbosity or vivid visuals or vital activism, and of course, those fresh-faced but hardly callow, protean people who you can't not watch as they invest themselves in capturing their moment and our moments in this toddlin' town today." –Ray Pride, Newcity Honorees include: Steve James, Director/Producer/Editor/Cinematographer Continued