Born in Hampton, Virginia to a sports-crazed family, Steve James’ first dream was of basketball stardom, similar to the subjects of his most famous work. After graduating from Southern Illinois University with an MFA in Film, James moved to Chicago to pursue filmmaking with an idea for a short film about a single city basketball court and the players and stories surrounding it. Research for that film led James and his partners (Producer and Co-Editor Frederick Marx and Producer and Cinematographer Peter Gilbert) to William Gates and Arthur Agee, two poor, inner-city eighth-grade basketball players whose potential for careers in the NBA grabs the attention of suburban private high school recruiters.
Hoop Dreams (1994) followed the struggles of the players and their families through their time in high school as they pursue better lives, revealing the racial and economic forces that contribute to sustained poverty in America. Supported on a shoestring budget by Kartemquin Films before eventually earning funding from public television, the filmmakers recorded over 250 hours of footage over six years. The release of the film at the Sundance Film Festival became a revelation and an important moment in the rise of independent cinema in the 1990s.
Hollywood and the chance to direct narrative films came calling after Hoop Dreams, and James directed several sports-themed movies including the theatrical release Prefontaine (1997), and the television film Joe and Max (2002). But James continued making longitudinal documentaries during that time, including Stevie (2002), about a troubled man whom James served as mentor while in college, and The New Americans (2004), detailing the struggles and triumphs of recent American immigrants.
James has spent his career weaving between sports stories, complex social issues and unique characters with Reel Paradise (2005), about independent film gurus John and Janet Pierson struggling to raise their children while running a movie theater in Fiji, At the Death House Door (2008), about the Texas execution of an innocent man, and No Crossover: The Trial of Allen Iverson (2010) for ESPN’s 30 for 30 series, where James returned to his hometown to examine the roots and effects of a racially-tinged brawl 17 years earlier. And 2014 saw the release of Life Itself, which began as a way to capture noted film critic Roger Ebert’s life after debilitating cancer treatments, but the film became an appreciation of Ebert’s entire life after he passed away during filming.
Hoop Dreams won James the DGA Award for Documentary in 1994 and was eventually selected for the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry. James was nominated for the DGA Documentary Award in 2008 for At the Death House Door (along with Peter Gilbert) and in 2011 for The Interrupters.