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Home for Life Kartemquin Films, 1966

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Home for Life Kartemquin Films, 1966 HOME FOR LIFE KARTEMQUIN FILMS, 1966 “Home For Life is the most moving and gently penetrating film I have seen, dealing with the theme of old age in our society. It is, in a sense, a hymn to life; yet, it presents a challenge to us to face up to one of the most pressing problems of our day -- our attitude toward the aged. In its own way, it is a work of art rather than an artful work.” -Studs Terkel "Extraordinarily moving...recording moments of deep human emotion." - Roger Ebert For 40 years, KARTEMQUIN FILMS has been making documentaries that examine and critique society through the stories of real people. Kartemquin's debut film, Home For Life established the direction the organization would take over the next four decades. We aim to make this film available to these audiences to consider again—both as an in-depth look at the world of advanced aging, but also now as a historical example of vérité filmmaking and a document of geriatric care in 1960’s Chicago. The film depicts the experiences of two elderly people in their first month at a home for the aged- a man, isolated from the world he knew, and a woman, uprooted from a family setting. The documentary focuses on the feelings and reactions of the two new residents as they interact with other residents, medical staff, social workers, psychiatrists and family. A touching, sometimes painfully honest dramatic experience, Home for Life is an invaluable professional development tool for in-service staff training, and a thought-provoking missive for all other audiences interested in the problems of the aged. The New York Times remarked: Its tone of compassion, combined with quiet despair, is summed up when an unintentionally patronizing nurse asks an old woman what she thinks of her room. The old woman answers: ‘I don’t care anymore.’ The documentary won the Chicago award for “Best American Film” at the Chicago International Film Festival in 1968 and was featured at both the New York Film Festival and the Edinburgh Film Festival in Scotland. Kartemquin Films is one of the longest-running independent documentary production companies in America and this film marks the birth of the organization. In addition, Home for Life stands as an early and successful example of cinema vérité use in documentary film production. The work was reviewed in the film journal, Film Quarterly in 1967 by Ernest Callenbach, as an example of the powerful new trend of cinema vérité technique taking on an institution, instead of an event or individual as in past works. The production of Home For Life is also chronicled in great detail in Kartemquin Founders’ (and Home For Life’s filmmakers) Gordon Quinn and Gerald Temaner’s filmmaking treatise, “Cinematic Social Inquiry” which was first published in Principles of Visual Anthropology, ed. Paul Hockings, 1975. The 9-page essay, which outlined the methodology of the infant Kartemquin Films, describes the intense ethnographic tactics that went into the film’s production, as well as detailed descriptions of the film’s community value upon its release. The actual idea of “Cinematic Social Inquiry” relies on the use of cinema vérité techniques to explore contemporary social issues on camera, through dramatic human stories, and then present them to an audience for deliberation. Home For Life illustrates that Kartemquin was successful at these aims even in its early days. Variety magazine commented on Quinn and Temaner’s filmmaking, …the new hand-held camera, zoom lens and minimal lighting techniques have made it possible for sensitive, imaginative documentarians to approach the level of cinematic ‘inner reality’ heretofore possible only with actors… if screen art is defined as that which offers the Aristotelian experience of ‘pity and terror’ there can be few ‘art films’ which have included anything so devastating as a single scene in this film. In addition to its technical relevance, Home For Life has central importance in American documentary history due to its widespread use in the community. Kartemquin Films prides itself on creating comprehensive civic-engagement campaigns for each of their documentaries to maximize the reach and effectiveness in various communities confronting social issues. Again, “Cinematic Social Inquiry” describes how upon watching the film, administrators at the nursing home modified entrance procedures as well as other care techniques. The initial reaction from social scientists and medical experts was surprise, because they customarily thought of films as either a way of communicating what was common knowledge in the field to lay audiences or, at best, as a way of making a few points to students, but not as a way of learning something. Since then, Home For Life has been used by anthropologists, psychiatrists, sociologists, psychologists, social workers and gerontologists at their conventions and in their courses… Because of the way it used the completeness and complexity of film for recording behavior, Home For Life has been used as a primary source for experts and their students to interpret. Kartemquin Educational Films has a history of producing engaging and effective character- driven documentaries with deep outreach campaigns that help communities interact with media in a productive, and reflective, way. Home For Life is an early and brilliant example of this cultural mandate. For all its accolades and historical significance, Home for Life was extremely vulnerable to being lost forever as there are only three known prints of the documentary in existence. It was made in 1966 as an 80 minute, B&W 16mm film. Tragically, a majority of the source material for Home For Life was destroyed in a fire in Kartemquin’s old studio during the spring of 1973. A few film clips and sound mixes remain. Home For Life is currently unavailable to the public in any form. Over the years, portions of the film have been shown in a handful of special screenings, including in a retrospective of Kartemquin’s work presented by the University of Chicago in 2005. For a brief time earlier, it was believed that we had located the original A/B rolls, however the search proved fruitless. We have two prints of this historic film in-house, but both have been heavily screened and would require substantial repair and cleaning. Since the fire, Kartemquin has searched for additional copies of the film to no avail. Several months ago however, our luck changed. Through an old contact at the Home, we located (with great excitement) a print of the film at the Spertus Museum. This print was donated to the museum by the Drexel Home when it closed and has rarely been screened. Through a generous donation from the National Film Preservation Foundation, in-kind preservation services from Film Technology Company and Chace Audio, Kartemquin Films is excited to announce that Home For Life has been restored and will be preserved for generations to come. A new 16mm print was debuted at the Gene Siskel Film Center on November 10, 2007 to a sold out crowd of film enthusiasts, Chicago historians, many working in the field of aging, and lastly several of the old Drexel Home employees. It was a moving night for many. A comprehensive DVD including the new restored version of the film and many extras will be available in March of 2008. .
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