Posted by Larry Gleeson

 

AFI DOCS has announced that it will pay tribute to Steve James as the 2018 Charles Guggenheim Symposium honoree. James is the remarkable, Academy Award nominated filmmaker best known for HOOP DREAMS (1994) and ABACUS: SMALL ENOUGH TO JAIL (2016).

Each year, the AFI DOCS Charles Guggenheim Symposium honors a master of the nonfiction art form. Taking place at the Warner Bros. Theater at the National Museum of American History in Washington, DC, on June 14, the Symposium will include an in-depth conversation with James along with clips from his acclaimed works and episode one of his new Starz docuseries, AMERICA TO ME. The Symposium will be moderated by Michael Phillips, film critic of the Chicago Tribune.

Each year, the AFI DOCS Charles Guggenheim Symposium honors a master of the nonfiction art form. Taking place at the Warner Bros. Theater at the National Museum of American History in Washington, DC, on June 14, the Symposium will include an in-depth conversation with James along with clips from his acclaimed works and episode one of his new Starz docuseries, AMERICA TO ME. The Symposium will be moderated by Michael Phillips, film critic of the Chicago Tribune.

In AMERICA TO ME, James returns to the subjects that have marked his career — class, race and how the two affect social and economic mobility. James follows students at a public high school in suburban Chicago that is considered the gold standard of diversity, yet on the ground, he discovers a different story.

The acclaimed HOOP DREAMS began James’ long and fruitful affiliation with Kartemquin Films. James’ next documentary, STEVIE (2002), won major festival awards in the U.S. and internationally. THE INTERRUPTERS (2011) was a hit on the festival circuit, winning a dozen awards. LIFE ITSELF (2014) premiered to critical acclaim at Sundance and was named the best documentary of the year by more than a dozen critics’ associations. ABACUS: SMALL ENOUGH TO JAIL was a 2018 Academy Award nominee for Best Documentary Feature, and was nominated for numerous other awards, winning Best Political Documentary at the Critics’ Choice Documentary Awards.

James joins a renowned list of Guggenheim Symposium honorees: Charles Guggenheim (2003), Barbara Kopple (2004), Martin Scorsese (2006), Jonathan Demme (2007), Spike Lee (2008), Albert Maysles (2009), Frederick Wiseman (2010), Chris Hegedus and D A Pennebaker (2011), Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky (2012), Errol Morris (2013), Alex Gibney (2014), Stanley Nelson (2015), Werner Herzog (2016) and Laura Poitras (2017).

AFI DOCS is proud to have AT&T return as this year’s Presenting Sponsor. Passes and tickets to AFI DOCS, including the Charles Guggenheim Symposium, are now on sale at AFI.com/AFIDOCS.

(Source: afi.com)