Screening and lecture on award-winning documentary, "The Interrupters" to be held Feb. 24 at Schaumburg Campus

Posted: 02/13/2012

Ceasefire member Ameena Matthews is pictured above. Photo courtesy of Kartemquin Films.

A discussion and screening of The Interrupters, an award-winning documentary following three people who try to protect their communities from the kind of violence that they themselves once carried out, will be held at 5:30 p.m. Friday, Feb. 24 at Roosevelt University’s Schaumburg Campus, 1400 N. Roosevelt Blvd., Schaumburg.

Documenting violent incidents and stories about violence in Chicago, The Interrupters, directed by Steve James and written by best-selling author Alex Kotlowitz, features the work of a not-for-profit organization called Ceasefire, where their “interrupters” work to diffuse gang activity in communities before it erupts into violence.

Tio Hardiman, director of Ceasefire, Eduardo Bocanegra, a Ceasefire member who spent time in prison, and Ceasefire member Ameena Matthews (pictured above), a former drug-ring enforcer and daughter of gang leader Jeff Fort who has been interviewed on TV’s Colbert Report, will discuss the documentary and their work with the nonprofit in the streets of Chicago following screening of the documentary in Roosevelt’s Alumni Hall.

The Interrupters premiered in 2011 at the Sundance Film Festival and made an international premiere at the 2011 Adelaide Film Festival in Australia. The winner in 2011 of the Special Jury Award in the United Kingdom’s largest documentary festival, the film has been called truly inspirational by Kenneth Turan, a critic and reviewer for the Los Angeles Times. “No concept in the critical lexicon has been more devalued and debased than ‘inspirational.’ The term has been so misused, it's just about lost all meaning. A film that makes that word real and vital has to be special. The Interrupters is such a film,” Turan wrote in a recent review.

Sponsored by Roosevelt’s Mansfield Institute for Social Justice and Transformation, the College of Arts and Sciences, the Office of the Schaumburg Campus Provost, the Center for Campus Life and the Office of Community Engagement at Roosevelt, the screening and discussion are free and open to the public. However, seating is limited.

To RSVP, contact Nikita Stange at nstange@roosevelt.edu. More information is also available by visiting www.roosevelt.edu/misjt.

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