- Painter Leon Golub at work in the documentary Golub (1988), which Blumenthal codirected and edited
Jerry Blumenthal, founding partner of the Chicago documentary production house Kartemquin Films, passed away on Thursday. He had been involved with the company from the production of its first film, Home for Life, in 1966. Over the next four decades he would codirect almost a dozen projects for Kartemquin—among them The Chicago Maternity Center Story (1976), The Last Pullman Car (1983), and Golub (1988)—and serve as editor, sound recordist, or consultant on numerous others. He also worked on Barbara Kopple’s Oscar-winning documentary feature American Dream (1990), in addition to teaching courses at the University of Chicago and Columbia College. “He was a friend, colleague, and mentor to so many of us,” reads a statement on the Kartemquin website. “All of us in the Kartemquin community are mourning his loss, and will be for many days to come.”
Many of the films that Blumenthal codirected addressed social issues, such as union organizing and public housing, though he maintained a lifelong interest in fine art. “Jerry was always interested in how art could impact life, politics especially,” said Hoffman. Not surprisingly Blumenthal’s favorite of his own films was Golub, which presents the creation and public reception of a large canvas by painter Leon Golub on the subject of the U.S. government’s involvement in El Salvador. Jonathan Rosenbaum, writing in the Reader, declared it “probably not only Kartemquin’s best film, but also the best account of the creation of a work of art.” Blumenthal was particularly proud of how the film fused his two primary interests, describing Golub as “a film without any kind of shame or embarrassment in [being] artistic. That kind of creative and artistic shaping of the material was very much a part of its political subject.”
