Back in 1987, documentary director-producer Steve James and his partner Frederick Marx joined with director of photography and producer Peter Gilbert to create a documentary about two ghetto youths from Chicago playing high school basketball and pursuing their dream to be on an NBA team. The filmmaking trio had only $2,500 with which to make the documentary, so they shot on video. After logging more than 250 hours of footage, they knew they had something more than a mere TV documentary. Instead, the result turned out to be the feature documentary "Hoop Dreams" (1994), which earned a place on
