Peter Kuttner is aChicago filmmaker,activist, andcameraman. He is known for his early socially-conscious documentary films that touch on topics such asopposition to United States involvement in the Vietnam War,gentrification of Chicago,racism, andsocial class. He produced many of these with the film collectiveKartemquin Films, of which he was an original member. He is best known for his work on the film The End of the Nightstick (1993) with Cindi Moran and Eric Scholl, which documentedpolice brutality in Chicago and torture allegations against commanderJon Burge.[1] Kuttner has worked extensively in activism and community service, and was a founding member of activist group Rising Up Angry.[2] Kuttner has worked with many collaborators including Kartemquin Collective founderGordon Quinn, and filmmakersHaskell Wexler andRobert Kramer.[3][4] He is also known for camera work on a number of major motion pictures includingMan of Steel andSource Code.[5]
Kuttner grew up in a middle-class neighborhood and attended public school nearWrigley Field in Chicago, Illinois.[6] He attended college atNorthwestern University, where he created the filmCause Without a Rebel (1965), a short documentary film about student political complacency on the Northwestern Campus. Kuttner graduated from Northwestern that same year in 1965.[7]
After graduation, Kuttner joined theWar On Poverty Pre-College Film Workshop program. During this time he taught and collaborated withAfrican-American students fromDillard University inNew Orleans on the filmsTackle is a Girl’s Best Friend (1965) andMary Had a Little Lamb (1965).[8]
In 1966 Kuttner was hired as a director at Chicago Television StationWTTW (Window to the World), a station that would eventually be owned byPBS. It was here that a visiting crew introduced Kuttner to theCinéma vérité style of documentary filmmaking.[9] There he made a small number of shows including the arts series "Facets".[7]
After leaving WTTW in the fall of 1967, Kuttner became interested in political activism and eventually reconnected with some CanadianCinéma vérité filmmakers he had worked with before, who were filming a piece aboutNorman Mailer out of the Toronto offices of Allan King. During his stay in New York, Kuttner met Melvin Margolis at a film screening, who then introduced him to Newsreel, a New York-based documentary film group whose subjects included theAnti-war movement, theBlack Power movement, and theWomen's liberation movement.[4][10] The group had connections to anti-war protestorsDavid Dellinger,Rennie Davis, andTom Hayden, who would eventually be named as part of theChicago Seven conspiracy.
Kuttner opened a Chicago chapter of the group, recruiting 15 members, includingJon Jost, and established ties with local film collectives likeKartemquin andThe Film Group. The Chicago branch functioned mostly as a distributor for the New York Headquarters.[4] The branch released one film under the name “Chicago Film Co-op”,April 27 (1986), which documented the1968 Democratic National Convention protests and police response.[11] They also started production on two other films that were later damaged in a fire. One of the films, a documentary about theBlack Panther Party's Illinois chapter's involvement in theFree Breakfast for Children program, was lost completely. The other was the filmTrick Bag, which Kuttner would eventually restore during his time at Kartemquin.[4]
Kuttner was a founding member of the ChicagoNew Left activist group Rise Up Angry, where he took a break from filmmaking.[12] There, he wrote film reviews for the organization’s newspaper and helped organize their citywide free clinic.[4] They worked alongside thePeace movement,Black Power movement, andWomen's liberation movement.
Kuttner also spent time working withUpward Bound, a college prep program for students from disadvantaged areas. He also worked on the boards of the Community TV Network and Community Film Workshop, both established media programs for Chicago youth.[12]
Kuttner started working with Kartemquin in 1968, and joined officially in 1972 after he got a call from Gordon Quinn.[4] At Kartemquin, his films covered topics ranging from gentrification to funding cuts of home-birth organizations.[13] During his time there he worked on the filmsHum 255,Trick Bag, andNow We Live on Clifton, and theChicago Maternity Center Story (1976).[12][14]
Trick Bag was a collaboration between Kartemquin,Columbia College Chicago, and Rise Up Angry.[15] Peter Kuttner's connection to Rise Up Angry sparked the creation of the film,[16] as it was originally a Newsreel project that had been left unfinished when the group dissolved. The film negatives were destroyed in a fire, but Kuttner helped restore it from the work print when he joined Kartemquin in 1972. The film features various conversations and interviews with youth, workers, and veterans around Chicago talking about race and class. Trick Bag went on to earn theChicago International Film Festival "Merit Award".
In 1994 Kuttner collaborated with Chicago Torture Justice, an organization dealing with the aftermath and recovery of brutality experienced at the hands of police officers likeJon Burge. Kuttner producedThe End of the Nightstick (1994), a PBS P.O.V. broadcast, with Cyndi Moran and Eric Scholl.[1] The film received a Silver Hugo from theChicago International Film Festival in 1994.[12]
In 2017 Kuttner worked as an instructor to Community TV Network students, who created a film featuring the south side of Chicago community center. The short film,Welcome to the Peace House, went on to win the CHICAGO Award by theChicago International Film Festival’s CineYouth Festival.[17] Kuttner has continued his work as a political activist through local activist groups and as a member of theInternational Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees Union, and as a board member ofSouth Side Projections.[9][18]
Kuttner has contributed to a number of commercial productions in Chicago as a camera assistant. Some of these includeFerris Bueller's Day Off (1986),The Dark Knight (2008),Source Code (2011),Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011),Formosa Betrayed (2009), and the U.S. version of TV seriesShameless. Others that were filmed in and around Chicago wereMan of Steel (2013),Cheaper by the Dozen (2003),Proof (2005),The Break-Up (2006),Eagle Eye (2008),Traitor (2008),Barbershop 2: Back in Business (2004), andMad Dog and Glory (1993).[7][5]
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