Undefeated: Lessons Learned On the Field For the Time Off It

Undefeated

Directed By: Daniel Lindsay and T.J. Martin

Featuring: Bill Courtney, O.C. Brown, Montrail ‘Money’ Brown, and Chavis Daneils

Cinematography By: Daniel Lindsay and T.J. Martin, Edited By: Daniel Lindsay and T.J. Martin, Original Music: Michael Brook, Daniel McMahon, and Miles Neilsen

Rated: PG-13 for the naughty language often heard on football fields.

            The great debate on documentaries is often whether the filmmaker is responsible for the quality of the film, or if it is simply the power of what is being filmed. It is somewhat of a moronic debate to say the least (content and style go hand in hand), however, something must be said for documentaries that simply have the camera in the right place at the right time. We can think of the chaos in Gimme Shelter, the insanity of Francis Ford Coppola in Hearts of Darkness, or the stirring funeral speech Ameena Matthews gives in The Interrupters.

            Undefeated, a documentary about a small town football team that is part sports drama, part coming-of-age tale, certainly falls into the category of the later. I’m not sure what directors Daniel Lindsay and T.J. Martin expected when they turned their cameras toward the fields of Manassas High School, a place of no hope among a poor, predominantly black neighborhood of Memphis. However, after whittling hours upon hours of footage from the school’s unbelievable season, Undefeated has turned into a stirring portrait of discipline and character, and more rousing than most fictional sports movies.

The Interrupters: Between a Gun and a Hard Place

The Interrupters

Directed By: Steve James

Produced By: Alex Kotlowitz and Steve James

Featuring: Ameena Matthews, Tio Hardiman, Eddie Bocanegra, and Ricardo Williams

Director of Photography: Steve James

Rated: Unrated, but it features language and a scene of shocking gang violence.

            What does it mean to be a violence interrupter? This group, the focus of a new documentary called The Interrupters, has one focus: stop people from killing each other. They don’t try to break up gangs, or set up curfews, or teach drug awareness. They instead set themselves up as the last line of defense between two men and a gun. And if you’ve been looking for a real superhero this summer, forget Steve Rodgers and Hal Jordan; the real superhero of the summer is Ameena Matthews and the other subjects of this sublime work of real life caught on film.

            The Interrupters is directed by Steve James, best remembered for his 1994 basketball documentary Hoop Dreams. Mr. James has returned to the same part of South Side Chicago, but instead of showing us a glimpse of the American dream, this is the American tragedy. Late in the film, Tio Gardiman, who runs the violence interrupters (a chapter of a group called CeaseFire), discusses the irony of having a black president in office when violence between African Americans, especially in Chicago, has reached staggering rates.