Kartemquin Films & Positive Exposure

Last Login 02/14/10

• New York, NY
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“These filmmakers have the ability to penetrate the souls of the people they depict.”
—Roger Ebert, The Chicago Sun Times
KARTEMQUIN FILMS has been producing award-winning documentary films on today's most pressing social issues for over 40 years. Kartemquin documentaries are supported by civic engagement strategies that are developed with local and national partners to foster understanding, change thinking, and build support for social change. Kartemquin acts as a trusted bridge between communities and the media, to foster the growth of new filmmaking voices that are passionate about their subjects, and to advocate for the importance of strong local and public media.

Kartemquin’s 2008 film In The Family sensitized health-care professionals and the general public to the consequences of living with the “breast cancer gene”, or BRCA, a mutation for which filmmaker Joanna Rudnick herself tested positive at the age of 27. During the making of In The Family, Rudnick used footage to advocate for the passage of the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA) and to support the ACLU’s lawsuit against the patenting of BRCA by Myriad Genetics.

Kartemquin's best known film, Hoop Dreams, won every major critics prize and journalism award in 1995 and was named on over 150 “ten best” lists. Kartemquin’s most ambitious project, the seven-hour series, The New Americans, enjoyed extraordinary reception from both American and international critics as well as the prestigious International Documentary Association Best Limited Series Award in 2004.

POSITIVE EXPOSURE, founded in 1997 by former fashion photographer Rick Guidotti, is a highly innovative arts organization working with individuals living with genetic difference. Through vigorous cross-sector partnerships with health advocacy organizations, governmental agencies and educational institutions, Positive Exposure utilizes the visual arts to significantly impact the fields of genetics, mental health and human rights.

Our programs support and promote human dignity through Positive Exposure's Spirit of Difference photographic image data bank and video interviews of persons, particularly children, living with genetic conditions.

A recurring theme voiced by many individuals/families and organizations is the need to help physicians, particularly medical students and trainees, learn how to best meet the concerns of individuals/families with, or at risk for, genetic disorders.

Each individual living with a genetic difference desires to be viewed first and foremost as a human being with his/her own special needs rather than as a specific diagnosis/disease entity; currently available medical images illustrating genetic difference are particularly dehumanizing and dispiriting.

Positive Exposure conducts Self-Esteem/Self-Advocacy photographic and interview workshops in collaboration with people living with genetic conditions. Positive Exposure also presents diversity workshops and portable, sustainable educational and human rights programs and multi media exhibitions for physicians, nurses, genetic counselors, health care professionals-in-training, universities, elementary and secondary schools, legislators and the general public.