Steve James is the Oscar-winning director of Hoop Dreams. His new documentary The Interrupters centres on CeaseFire, a community project designed to tackle gang violence in Chicago, sending out local people to try and interrupt street disputes and feuds. He tells IdeasMag how he made the film…
In Chicago, 90% of violence is isolated to 12% of the city.
If you watch the news and read news stories, one of the things you have a tendency to think is that people in these communities are numb to violence, that they feel a complete sense of hopelessness.
We certainly saw a great deal of hopelessness in the course of making The Interrupters, but we also saw a great deal of hope. We didn’t see any of that numbness. We saw an awful lot of pain.
The Interrupters demanded we were out there on the streets. We shot 300 hours of footage in 14 months. On Hoop Dreams, we shot less than that in four and a half years. It was a film that relied on situations authentically unfolding in front of my camera. It demanded an intensive process.
I don’t think I could have made this film at the start of my career. It took me time and experience to be able to take something like this on, to learn how to gain trust and intimacy with the people I was filming. I had to learn that.
The most important thing a filmmaker can do is simply make a film. From a technological standpoint, you can do quite a bit without a lot of resources. The means of production, to bring Marx into it, have become more available.
That’s why there’s been an explosion of filmmaking. Sundance last year had something like 10,000 films submitted. They only show 110. People are clearly out there doing stuff, and that’s clearly what you have to do.
But you need to be able to persevere if you fail the first time. A lot of those 10,000 films will be by first time filmmakers. You have to wonder how many of them will make second films if festivals don’t pick up their first films.
When you’re starting with nothing – without money, without contacts, without resources – it’d better be something you feel you need to do. That’s the way I felt.
You need to start with an idea that you struggle with. There’s an idea at the centre of The Interrupters that troubles me. Without that, you’ll be in a situation where you won’t know what to shoot and what not to shoot.
But you also need to remain completely open to where it takes you. Every film should be an act of discovery - not to get too touchy-feely. If you go in with preconceived notions about the story you’re telling and the shots you’re going to get, why even make it?
You’ve got to go in saying: “This is the story I think I’m going to tell, and this is what I think it’s about, but whatever happens is going to dictate what the film will ultimately be.”
When you get into the editing, that’s when you author the story. You begin to see all sorts of parallels, and scenes that were not of particular interest when you shot them suddenly loom large as significant. It’s amazing how your perception of something can change in editing, simply because of the way a story can evolve, and you realize that certain scenes, certain pieces of dialogue, were actually real turning points, and I love that aspect of it…
The Interrupters, produced by Alex Kotlowitz, is out in cinemas nationwide on Friday 12.
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