Taylor Chain I: A Story in a Union Local

Jerry Blumenthal (1936-2014) worked as a maker on a team that made HSA Strike ’75 (Kartemquin, 1975) in Chicago. He was one of the founders of Kartemquin, working with them until his death in 2014. He began as one of the makers of Shulie (1966), the groundbreaking film about Shulamith Firestone. His film, Golub: Late Works are the Catastrophes (2004), revisited the great American artist thirteen years after the award-winning Golub (1988). Vietnam, Long Time Coming (made with Gordon Quinn, Peter Gilbert, and Adam Singer) aired on NBC, earning a national Emmy and the Directors Guild of America Award for Best Documentary of 1999. Among his over twenty-five films, Blumenthal listed The Chicago Maternity Center Story (1976), The Last Pullman Car (1983), Taylor Chain (1980), Taylor Chair II: A Story of Collective Bargaining (1984), and the Palestinian story in Kartemquin’s seven-hour PBS series, The New Americans (2004) as the most personally and politically significant.

Artistic Director and founding member of Kartemquin Films, Gordon Quinn has been making documentaries for over 50 years. Roger Ebert, of the Chicago Sun Times, called his first film Home for Life (1966) “an extraordinarily moving documentary.” With Home for Life Gordon established the direction he would take for the next four decades, making cinéma vérité films that investigate and critique society by documenting the unfolding lives of real people.

At Kartemquin, Gordon created a legacy that is an inspiration for young filmmakers and a home where they can make high-quality, social-issue documentaries. Gordon currently executive produces and works creatively on all of our current productions. Kartemquin’s best known film, Hoop Dreams (1994), executive produced by Gordon, was released theatrically to unprecedented critical acclaim. The film follows two inner-city high school basketball players for five years as they pursue their NBA dreams. Its many honors include: the Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival, The Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award, Chicago Film Critics Award – Best Picture, Los Angeles Film Critics Association – Best Documentary and an Academy Award Nomination.