Hoop Dreams: The Iconic Basketball Documentary Remains as Powerful as Ever 30 Years Later

In the opinions of the two most famous film critics in the country in 1994, Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert of Siskel & Ebert fame, not to mention a number of their colleagues at other media outlets, the best film of 1994 was…a documentary about two high school hoopers from Chicago.

Whether you’re a longtime basketball junkie who already knows everything there is to know about Hoop Dreams, the cinematic masterpiece about Arthur Agee, William Gates and their families, or a young buck just learning about the film for the first time, you have to understand how utterly improbable it was that the single best movie of any year was a basketball doc. Quadruply so back in ’94, when there was no such thing as 30 for 30 and you were lucky if you found a documentary on any subject anywhere other than PBS. In fact, filmmakers Steve James and Frederick Marx originally set out to make a 30-minute piece they hoped would make it to PBS and on the back end, well, there’d be no such thing as 30 for 30 if Hoop Dreams didn’t show the world how powerful a documentary rooted in sports could be.

It was no short-lived phenomenon, either. Hoop Dreams has appeared in numerous lists of the greatest documentaries of all time and tends to be passed down from one generation to another in basketball families like a treasured heirloom. “I think the biggest impact is knowing folks in my generation are watching with their kids. I just saw a clip of Carmelo Anthony saying Hoop Dreams is a film his son needs to watch,” says Gates, who during the film commutes 90 minutes from the Cabrini-Green Homes in Chicago out to the private St. Joseph High School in Westchester and eventually overcomes a knee injury to earn a scholarship to Marquette. “At the core of it, the film is as relevant today as it was then because the issues still remain…You’ve still got kids who have the dream of making the League, and there’s two elements of the story. There’s injuries, there’s grades, there’s lack of opportunities. These issues still exist. Just change the faces.”

Says James, who directed Hoop Dreams as his first major project and subsequently worked on numerous successful films with Chicago-based Kartemquin Films, “I’m shocked and surprised how many people still talk about it. It’s not every day, but I do get approached about Hoop Dreams a lot. It helps that it’s out there and available—people can still watch this film.”

While James and Marx had the idea for Hoop Dreams and started the work on it, Peter Gilbert came on shortly thereafter and served as the Director of Photography and a producer. Gilbert has also gone on to produce many movies and remains prolific to this day—but nothing has hit quite like Hoop Dreams did.

“It’s an interesting thing. I’ve made 30 or 40 other films, including one about the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, Innocence Project films about people who were wrongly convicted, all different kinds of stuff, as well as narrative stuff,” Gilbert says. “But Hoop Dreams is the thing that people define me by. [It’s] not a bad film to be defined by.”

Where Gates, James and Gilbert have all branched out since Hoop Dreams came out three decades ago (the former as a pastor and motivational speaker who moved to San Antonio and the latter with all their subsequent movie projects), Agee is, effectively, “Mr. Hoop Dreams.” He’s got his Classic HD Basketball Clothing Co. and is working on Hoop Dreams 2. He also teams up with Gates on Agee and Gates The Podcast: What’s your Hoop Dream? Asked over text if Hoop Dreams feels like a daily part of his life all these years later, Agee doesn’t hesitate. “It’s never ending, it’s always there no matter where I’m at,” he types back quickly. “It’s just a real cool thing to live every day.” Dreams are real, indeed. 

SLAM has and would celebrate a film such as Hoop Dreams no matter how old we or the film might be, but there’s special resonance that the movie is turning 30 this year just as we are. In February, we brought the guys together at the first annual SLAM Film Festival to celebrate the 30th anniversary, which kicked off a year-long celebration of the film.

Now, Alamo Drafthouse will be re-releasing the film in theaters this week as part of their 1994 look back series, Project Backboard is refurbishing the court at Garfield Park on Chicago’s West Side as part of JDS Sports’ Play With Purpose initiative, with a court unveiling this weekend, and SLAM will be dropping a capsule collection this Friday. You can join the stars and filmmakers of Hoop Dreams for an exclusive 30th anniversary panel at the prestigious Chicago Humanities Festival on November 9th. For more details and tickets, visit chicagohumanities.org.

Photos via Kartemquin Films.

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