James’ small stories tell big truths
In the annals of documentary filmmaking, Steve James can safely be billed as one of the greats.
His first feature film, “Hoop Dreams” — a sprawling depiction of American life on Chicago’s South Side from the viewpoint of two high school basketball stars — is commonly mentioned among the greatest documentaries of all time, and each of his subsequent films has offered windows into fascinating territories.
“If there’s a thread through many of the films I’ve done, if not virtually all of the films, (it’s that) one way or another, I’ve ended up following stories of people at critical stages in their lives,” says James, 63, lanky, calm and plainly down-to-earth as he speaks at a San Francisco hotel about his career.
Indeed, “Hoop Dreams” filmed the critical high school years of top athletes eyeing a path to professional basketball; “The New Americans,” an expansive seven-hour PBS documentary, focused on a handful of immigrants upon their arrival to America; and “Life Itself” chronicled the final months of film critic Roger Ebert’s life.
His newest documentary, “Abacus: Small Enough to Jail” (opening June 9 in Bay Area theaters), dives into the time leading up to and during the fraud trial of the family-owned and operated Abacus Federal Bank in New York City’s Chinatown.
James’ films are “more than anything, kind of like character studies,” he says. But his focus on individuals provides not only an intimate understanding of singular stories but also a reflection of a larger, more complicated picture. James’ fearless “The Interrupters,” a yearlong look at three activists working to stop violent encounters in Chicago’s South Side, doubles as an examination of the psychology and circumstances behind the rampant, deadly tragedies throughout the inner cities.
In “Abacus,” James again follows a character enmeshed in deeper social dimensions: Thomas Sung, a pillar, as James puts it, of the local Chinatown community and the 80-year old founder of Abacus Federal Bank.
Following the discovery of petty fraud committed by one of its loan officers, Sung’s comparatively small firm becomes the only bank ever to be criminally charged in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. A five-year legal battle ensues as the Sungs fight the Manhattan district attorney’s 184 charges and a dubiously concerted effort to prove that the bank systematically profited from and enabled mortgage fraud through its borrowers.
Through Sung, his wife and four daughters, the film explores the larger Chinatown area and how the trial could be seen as a targeting and scapegoating of an entire community and even Chinese Americans as a whole.
“They saw this larger issue of who gets justice in America and who doesn’t — and what one needs to do in the face of perceived injustice,” says James.
Questions of race, class and community intersect in the film, territory from which James has never shied away, but rather eagerly veered toward. Yet he is acutely aware of his presence as an outsider. James is quick to admit that he knew little of the Chinese American community, and truly capturing the insular Chinatown of New York would have been virtually impossible as a white filmmaker if not for the bravery of the Sung family and their willingness to allow access.
“It’s vitally important when you are a filmmaker going into a community that is not yours — not the community that you grew up in or the circumstances that you grew up in — to go in and be much more of a sponge,” James says. “You’re there to un
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