Hoop Dreams
'''Do you all wonder sometime how I am living?' asks Sheila Agee. 'How my children survive, and how they're living? It's enough to really make people want to go out there and just lash out and hurt somebody.''' "Yes, we have wondered. Her family is living on $268 a month in aid; when her son Arthur turned 18, his $100 payment was cut off, although he was still in high school. Their gas and electricity have been turned off in the winter. The family uses a camp lantern for light." "No screenwriter would dare write this story; it is drama and melodrama, packaged with outrage and moments that make you want to cry. ''Hoop Dreams'' (1994) has the form of a sports documentary, but along the way it becomes a revealing and heartbreaking story about life in America. When the filmmakers began, they planned to make a 30-minute film about eighth-graders being recruited from inner-city playgrounds to play for suburban schools. Their film eventually encompassed six years, involved 250 hours of footage, and found a reversal of fortunes they could not possibly have anticipated." " The movie was produced by the team of director Steve James, cinematographer Peter Gilbert and editor Frederick Marx. They benefitted from a remarkable intersection of opportunity and luck. They could not have known when they started how perfectly the experiences of Agee and Gates would generate the story they ended up telling." ------Roger Ebert DVD - The Criterion Collection
Curator's Comments: Read Roger Ebert's essay on this DVD Classic. Director: Steve James Country: U.S.A.
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