For many Chicagoans, 2021 can just go away now. For others, including Gordon Quinn, it’s a more heartening memory.
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For Quinn, this year was a quietly momentous improvement over the year that nearly killed him. Co-founder of Kartemquin Films, the long-running Chicago documentary production company, Quinn contracted COVID-19 at the beginning of the pandemic, likely while attending the Australian International Documentary Conference in early March 2020.
After two weeks’ hospitalization at Northwestern Memorial, he spent another two weeks on a ventilator.
“It felt like I was done,” he says now.
A young, persuasive doctor talked him out of obtaining a do-not-resuscitate order. Quinn survived, and eventually left the hospital in rough but less dire shape, moving to the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab for a long rehabilitation process with speech language pathologists, occupational therapists and other experts.
A year and a half later, Quinn, now 79, remains sharp-witted, genial, mellow. We met recently at Le Café Station Grill, around the corner from the Western Avenue Blue Line stop, several blocks from the Logan Square home he shares with his wife, Meg.
He is the Tribune’s Chicagoan of the Year in film for the second time. The last was a generation ago in 1995. That was the year following the release of Kartemquin-made “Hoop Dreams,” which Quinn executive-produced and which made a very big noise.
In 2021, Quinn traveled extensively on the film festival circuit with the Kartemquin documentary he co-directed, with Leslie Simmer, “For the Left Hand,” inspired by former Tribune arts critic Howard Reich’s 2015 three-part series on pianist and educator Norman Malone.
Meantime the longtime Kartemquin artistic head has laid plans for a transition from his artistic directorship role into a new, undetermined one.
In November Betsy Leonard joined the nonprofit organization as executive director. “The idea,” Quinn told me, “is to start looking for a new artistic director or some other way of taking over a big chunk of what I’ve done. I’m sure I’ll continue to play a role in the organization. What I do best, I think, is working with filmmakers on projects. But next year I’ll be 80. So, we’re looking to bring in someone new.”
Phrases such as “institutional growth” accompanied the announcement of Leonard’s hiring, though Quinn by nature never ran anything with that directive in mind.
“Under capitalism,” he said, “people think growth is important. And I don’t. I think staying true to your original vision and values is important. And then you add new values that are consistent with your mission. That’s very much a part of how any democracy has to work.”
Small “d” democracy comes up a lot with Quinn; it’s part of his DNA, as are words like “progressive” and “labor” adjoining “movement.” As a University of Chicago undergraduate, he wrote a final essay titled “Cinema Verité in a Democracy.” He has adhered to that idea, that question, ever since: How can documentary filmmaking lead to a more informed and empathetic citizenry?
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For decades at Kartemquin, headquartered — for now — in the charmingly wonky two-story converted house at 1901 W. Wellington Ave., Quinn has directed, produced, mentored and generally shown the way for an increasingly diverse array of films and filmmakers. Kartemquin’s likely to be moving sometime soon, he said; for one thing, the current office is the least ADA-accessible layout imaginable.
“That’s disturbing, given that ‘For the Left Hand’ (its subject, Malone, lost most of the use of his right arm at age 10 in a battering from his father) has strong accessibility themes. Some of our (interns and fellowship recipients) have accessibility issues. And we should be in a neighborhood easier to access via public transit.”
He pauses, and smiles. “But, you know, I’ve moved Kartemquin three times. I’ll leave that to the next generation.”
Michael Phillips is a Tribune critic.
Twitter @phillipstribune
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