At The Death House Door
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At The Death House Door
''At the Death House Door'' is a 2008 documentary film about Carroll Pickett, who served as the death house chaplain to the infamous "Walls" prison unit in Huntsville, Texas. It was produced and directed by the team of Steve James and Peter Gilbert, co-produced by Zak Piper and Aaron Wickenden. James and Gilbert had previously worked together on the well-received Kartemquin Films documentary ''Hoop Dreams'', on which James was the producer and director and Gilbert served as producer and director of photography. The film was produced by Kartemquin Films in association with the ''Chicago Tribune'', which provided partial funding. Synopsis Pickett presided over 95 executions in his 15-year career, including the very first by lethal injection. He kept his feelings about his work from his family, instead audiotaping an account of each one. Initially pro-execution, he became an anti-death penalty activist. Pickett was most affected by the execution of Carlos DeLuna in 1989. He firmly ...
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Steve James (producer)
Steve James (born March 8, 1954) is an American film producer and director of several documentaries, including ''Hoop Dreams'' (1994), '' Stevie'' (2002), ''The Interrupters'' (2011), '' Life Itself'' (2014), and '' Abacus: Small Enough to Jail'' (2016). Early life James was born in Hampton, Virginia. Career In 1997, James directed the feature film '' Prefontaine'' and the TV movies ''Passing Glory'' and ''Joe and Max''. One of his more recent films, ''The Interrupters'' which is a portrayal of a year inside the lives of former gang members in Chicago who now intervene in violent conflicts, was released in January 2011. Earlier it premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. The film is his sixth feature length collaboration with his long-time filmmaking home, the non-profit Chicago production studio Kartemquin Films,. It is his fifth feature to be accepted into the Sundance Film Festival. While working with Kartemquin Films, James has produced many films that pursue social inquiry ...
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Lethal Injection
Lethal injection is the practice of injecting one or more drugs into a person (typically a barbiturate, paralytic, and potassium solution) for the express purpose of causing rapid death. The main application for this procedure is capital punishment, but the term may also be applied in a broader sense to include euthanasia and other forms of suicide. The drugs cause the person to become unconscious, stops their breathing, and causes a heart arrhythmia, in that order. First developed in the United States, it has become a legal means of execution in Mainland China, Thailand (since 2003), Guatemala, Taiwan, the Maldives, Nigeria, and Vietnam, though Guatemala abolished the death penalty in civil cases in 2017 and has not conducted an execution since 2000 and the Maldives has never carried out an execution since its independence. Although Taiwan permits lethal injection as an execution method, no executions have been carried out in this manner; the same is true for Nigeria. Lethal ...
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Kartemquin Films Films
Kartemquin Films is a four-time Oscar-nominated 501(c)3 non-profit production company located in Chicago, Illinois, that produces a wide range of documentary films. It is the documentary filmmaking home of acclaimed producers such as Gordon Quinn ('' A Good Man''), Steve James (''Hoop Dreams''), Peter Gilbert (''Hoop Dreams''; ''At the Death House Door''), Maria Finitzo ('' Mapping Stem Cell Research: Terra Incognita''; '' In the Game''), Joanna Rudnick ('' In the Family''), Bing Liu (''Minding the Gap''), Aaron Wickenden ('' Almost There''), and Ashley O’Shay (Unapologetic). The organization was founded in 1966 by Gordon Quinn, Jerry Temaner and Stan Karter, three University of Chicago graduates who wanted to make documentary films guided by their principle of "Cinematic Social Inquiry". They were soon joined by Jerry Blumenthal, who remained an integral part of the organization until he died on November 13, 2014. Gordon Quinn remained Executive Director through late 2008 whe ...
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Films Directed By Steve James
A film also called a movie, motion picture, moving picture, picture, photoplay or (slang) flick is a work of visual art that simulates experiences and otherwise communicates ideas, stories, perceptions, feelings, beauty, or atmosphere through the use of moving images. These images are generally accompanied by sound and, more rarely, other sensory stimulations. The word "cinema", short for cinematography, is often used to refer to filmmaking and the film industry, and to the art form that is the result of it. Recording and transmission of film The moving images of a film are created by photographing actual scenes with a motion-picture camera, by photographing drawings or miniature models using traditional animation techniques, by means of CGI and computer animation, or by a combination of some or all of these techniques, and other visual effects. Before the introduction of digital production, series of still images were recorded on a strip of chemically sensitized ...
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2008 Films
The year 2008 involved many major film events. ''The Dark Knight'' was the year's highest-grossing film, while ''Slumdog Millionaire'' won the Academy Award for Best Picture (out of eight Academy Awards). Evaluation of the year 2008 has been widely considered to be a very significant year for cinema. The entertainment agency website IGN described 2008 as "one of the biggest years ever for movies." It stated, "2008 was the year when the comic book movie genre not only hits its zenith, but also gained critical respectability thanks to ''The Dark Knight''. Animated films also proved a huge draw for filmgoers, with Pixar's ''WALL-E'' becoming not only the highest grossing toon but also the most lauded. Things got off on the right foot with the monster movie madness of ''Cloverfield''. Marvel got down to business laying the groundwork for their superhero team-up ''The Avengers'' with the blockbuster hit ''Iron Man'' and their respectable attempt at rebooting ''The Incredible Hulk''. ...
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Carlos Hernández (criminal)
Carlos Hernández (July 14, 1954 – May 6, 1999) was an American man allegedly responsible for the 1983 murder of Wanda Lopez, for which Carlos DeLuna was executed. Since DeLuna's execution, questions have been raised about his conviction, with many believing him to be innocent. Biography Carlos Hernández Jr. was born on July 14, 1954, in Corpus Christi, Texas, the third child of Mexican parents, Fidela Gonzales and Carlos Hernández Sr. Hernández Jr. was raised in a two-bedroom apartment with his five siblings, his parents divorced in 1960 due to his father's conviction of rape. After the divorce, his mother found work at a local laundry in order to support her children. Following his father's departure from the family home, Carlos and his brother were placed at a local institution for youths, as his mother could not support them. Probation officers noted that Carlos's time spent at the institution negatively impacted him, and at 16 he dropped out of school. As a juvenile ...
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Carlos DeLuna
Carlos DeLuna (; March 15, 1962 – December 7, 1989) was an American man who was convicted of murder and executed by the State of Texas for killing Wanda Lopez, a 24-year-old gas station attendant in Corpus Christi, on the evening of February 4, 1983. Since DeLuna's execution by lethal injection in 1989, doubts have been raised about the conviction and the question of his guilt. An investigation published by the ''Columbia Human Rights Law Review'' in May 2012 has strengthened these claims of innocence by detailing a large amount of evidence suggesting the actual murderer was Carlos Hernandez, a similar-looking man who lived in a nearby neighborhood. Hernandez allegedly told at least five people that he, not DeLuna, was the murderer of Wanda Lopez. In 2021, DeLuna's case and claims of innocence were the subject of the documentary film ''The Phantom''. Crime Carlos DeLuna was charged with killing a gas station attendant, 24-year-old Wanda Lopez, on the evening of Februa ...
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Chicago Tribune
The ''Chicago Tribune'' is a daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, United States, owned by Tribune Publishing. Founded in 1847, and formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" (a slogan for which WGN radio and television are named), it remains the most-read daily newspaper in the Chicago metropolitan area and the Great Lakes region. It had the sixth-highest circulation for American newspapers in 2017. In the 1850s, under Joseph Medill, the ''Chicago Tribune'' became closely associated with the Illinois politician Abraham Lincoln, and the Republican Party's progressive wing. In the 20th century under Medill's grandson, Robert R. McCormick, it achieved a reputation as a crusading paper with a decidedly more American-conservative anti-New Deal outlook, and its writing reached other markets through family and corporate relationships at the ''New York Daily News'' and the ''Washington Times-Herald.'' The 1960s saw its corporate parent owner, Tribune Company, rea ...
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Peter Gilbert (filmmaker)
Peter Gilbert (born ) is an American documentary filmmaker. He was the cinematographer and one of the producers of ''Hoop Dreams'', a 1994 documentary about two teenage basketball players in Chicago. He has worked on several films for Kartemquin Films, including ''Vietnam, Long Time Coming'', ''At the Death House Door'' (which he co-directed with Steve James), and '' In the Game''. He was nominated for a Primetime Emmy for Exceptional Merit In Nonfiction Filmmaking in 2005 for producing ''With All Deliberate Speed'', a documentary about ''Brown v. Board of Education''. Prior to ''Hoop Dreams'', he worked on the cinematography of '' American Dream'' by Barbara Kopple, and with Haskell Wexler. He is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. , he lives in Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_ ...
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Hoop Dreams
''Hoop Dreams'' is a 1994 American documentary film directed by Steve James, and produced by Frederick Marx, James, and Peter Gilbert, with Kartemquin Films. It follows the story of two African-American high school students, William Gates and Arthur Agee, in Chicago and their dream of becoming professional basketball players. ''Hoop Dreams'' was originally intended to be a 30-minute short film produced for PBS; the filming of the special led to five years of filming and 250 hours of footage. ''Hoop Dreams'' premiered at the 1994 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Audience Award for Best Documentary. It won numerous other awards in the 1994 season, although it was not nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. Despite its length (171 minutes) and unlikely commercial genre, it received high critical and popular acclaim, and grossed over $11 million worldwide. ''Hoop Dreams'' was ranked #1 on the Current TV special ''50 Documentaries to See Before You D ...
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Kartemquin Films
Kartemquin Films is a four-time Oscar-nominated 501(c)3 non-profit production company located in Chicago, Illinois, that produces a wide range of documentary films. It is the documentary filmmaking home of acclaimed producers such as Gordon Quinn ('' A Good Man''), Steve James (''Hoop Dreams''), Peter Gilbert (''Hoop Dreams''; ''At the Death House Door''), Maria Finitzo ('' Mapping Stem Cell Research: Terra Incognita''; '' In the Game''), Joanna Rudnick ('' In the Family''), Bing Liu (''Minding the Gap''), Aaron Wickenden ('' Almost There''), and Ashley O’Shay (Unapologetic). The organization was founded in 1966 by Gordon Quinn, Jerry Temaner and Stan Karter, three University of Chicago graduates who wanted to make documentary films guided by their principle of "Cinematic Social Inquiry". They were soon joined by Jerry Blumenthal, who remained an integral part of the organization until he died on November 13, 2014. Gordon Quinn remained Executive Director through late 2008 whe ...
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