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Louder Than a Bomb Meet the Filmmaker Q&A Reception |
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The Arts Council, Inc. and Gainesville State College are proud to present “Louder Than a Bomb,” with Directors Greg Jacob and Jon Siskel as part of the South Arts Southern Circuit Tour of Independent Filmmakers at the Gainesville State College: Academic Building IV, Room 3110 (on Mathis Drive) on Thursday, October 20, 2011. Ticket price includes the movie and the Meet the Filmmaker Q&A session
following the film screening.
SYNOPSIS
LOUDER THAN A BOMB is a film about passion, competition, teamwork, and trust. It’s about the joy of being young, and the pain of growing up. It’s about speaking out, making noise, and finding your voice.
It also just happens to be about poetry.
Every year, more than six hundred teenagers from over sixty Chicago area schools gather for the world’s largest youth poetry slam, a competition known as "Louder Than a Bomb". Founded in 2001, Louder Than a Bomb is the only event of its kind in the country—a youth poetry slam built from the beginning around teams. Rather than emphasize individual poets and performances, the structure of Louder Than a Bomb demands that kids work collaboratively with their peers, presenting, critiquing, and rewriting their pieces. To succeed, teams have to create an environment of mutual trust and support. For many kids, being a part of such an environment—in an academic context—is life-changing.
LOUDER THAN A BOMB chronicles the stereotype-confounding stories of four teams as they prepare for and compete in the 2008 event. By turns hopeful and heartbreaking, the film captures the tempestuous lives of these unforgettable kids, exploring the ways writing shapes their world, and vice versa. This is not "high school poetry" as we often think of it. This is language as a joyful release, irrepressibly talented teenagers obsessed with making words dance. How and why they do it—and the community they create along the way—is the story at the heart of this inspiring film.
MEET THE FILMMAKERS
Following a screening of their feature film, “Louder Than a Bomb,” Directors Greg Jacon, Jon Siskel Tabakin, and the audience will engage in a discussion about the film and their work as filmmakers.
ABOUT THE FILMMAKERS
SISKEL/JACOBS PRODUCTIONS is a Chicago-based television and documentary production company founded in 2005 by Jon Siskel and Greg Jacobs. Greg and Jon produced and directed the documentary feature Louder Than a Bomb, which follows four Chicago-area high school poetry teams as they prepare for and compete in the world's largest youth slam. Since its premiere at the Cleveland International Film Festival in March 2010, the film has won fifteen festival prizes, including nine audience awards. It was also selected for the 2011 American Documentary Showcase, a program created by the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs "to cultivate greater understanding among people around the world." After a national theatrical rollout in the spring of 2011, Louder Than a Bomb will have its television premiere on the Oprah Winfrey Network as part of the OWN Documentary Club.
Prior to Louder Than a Bomb, SJP produced the Emmy-winning History Channel program 102 Minutes That Changed America, which reconstructs—in real time—the events of 9/11 in New York City, using only sound and video from that morning. The two-hour special premiered without commercial interruption on September 11, 2008, followed by I-Witness to 9/11, a look at the stories behind the footage. More than five million viewers tuned in to the premiere, making it the second most-watched telecast in the network’s history, and the program has now been seen by over twenty million viewers worldwide. One of the most acclaimed documentaries of recent years, 102 Minutes won three Primetime Emmys, including Outstanding Nonfiction Special, as well as the Most Innovative Program Award at the 2009 History Makers International Summit, a CINE Masters Series Award, a Silver Telly, and a FOCAL International Award. The show was also named the Best Nonfiction TV Episode of 2008 by iTunes. Most importantly, 102 Minutes has become standard viewing in high school and college classrooms across the country, a way for teachers to introduce their students to the emotional and historical impact of 9/11.
SJP is currently in production on additional episodes of its groundbreaking Witness series for the National Geographic Channel. The shows that have already aired include Witness: Katrina, Witness: D.C. 9/11, Witness: Disaster in Japan, and Witness: Tornado Swarm 2011. SJP also produced Head On, a two-hour special about the obsessive subculture of "team demolition derby" in Joliet, Illinois, which aired on Discovery in December 2006. In March 2009, Siskel/Jacobs Productions was named to Realscreen Magazine's "Global 100"—its annual list of the world's most influential factual production companies.
SJP co-founder GREG JACOBS served as VP/Chief Creative Officer at Towers Productions, where he oversaw the content of more than two hundred documentaries on five different networks, including award-winning shows and series for A&E, History, Discovery, The Weather Channel, and CNN. A graduate of Yale University, Greg has a master's degree in history from Ohio State, and is the author of Getting Around Brown: Desegregation, Development, and the Columbus Public Schools.
SJP co-founder JON SISKEL was executive producer and co-creator of the series "Fake Out", which ran for two seasons on Court TV. He has also produced shows for the A&E series American Justice, Investigative Reports, and Biography, and his work has been shown on The Travel Channel, Discovery, and History. Jon serves on the board of directors of Free Spirit Media, a Chicago-based youth media organization, as well as the Gene Siskel Film Center.
CLICK HERE TO ENTER THE "LOUDER THAN A BOMB" WEBSITE
The 2011-2012 Southern Circuit is a program of South Arts. Southern Circuit screenings are funded in part by a grant from South Arts in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts and local partner organizations. Special support for Southern Circuit was provided by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
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