ML - Michigan Avenue

2014 - Issue 6 - October

Michigan Avenue - Niche Media - Michigan Avenue magazine is a luxury lifestyle magazine centered around Chicago’s finest people, events, fashion, health & beauty, fine dining & more!

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With this year's Life Itself, director Steve James has come full circle. The documentary explores the life of Chicago film critic Roger Ebert, who helped catapult James's career two decades earlier by advocating for his Oscar-nominated film Hoop Dreams. Without Ebert, the 59-year-old Oak Park resident says, that seminal documentary "might very well have disappeared on public television." Life Itself is already getting buzz for the best documentary Oscar. Edgar Barens got an Oscar nod this year for his latest film, Prison Terminal, nominated for best documentary short. Like much of Barens's work, Prison Terminal takes a sober look at the US prison system—an interest he traces to his immigrant parents. In the 1970s, during Spain's fascist dictatorship, members of his family became political prisoners. Barens, 53, lives with his partner in Montgomery, Illinois, and works at UIC. I knew I wanted to be a filmmaker when: SJ: I took an undergraduate class where we watched the films of great auteurs like Ernst Lubitsch and Jean Renoir. I make documentary films because: EB: I'm giving a voice to people behind bars, a voice that most people don't hear. Most memorable reaction to a film of mine: SJ: My neighbor said that after he saw Hoop Dreams, whenever he watched basketball, he thought differently about those players and all that they went through to get there. EB: I showed my mom and dad some footage from Prison Terminal, and they were both in tears. Up next: SJ: Generation Food, a quest to understand the economic system that controls what we eat and don't eat. EB: A film about the plight of the American long-haul trucker. STEVE JAMES AND EDGAR BARENS THESE TWO DIRECTORS DOCUMENT NOTHING LESS THAN LIFE ITSELF. ON STEVE: Sport jacket ($1,584), dress shirt ($228), five-pocket wool flannel jeans ($327), pocket square ($80), and belt ($497), Paul Stuart. 107 E. Oak St., 312-640-2650; paulstuart.com. ON EDGAR: Own Make 101 suit ($1,298), slim-fit dress shirt ($92), and tie ($98), Brooks Brothers. 713 N. Michigan Ave., 312-915-0060; brooksbrothers.com. Pocket square, stylist's own 112 MICHIGANAVEMAG.COM

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