Our favorite tradition at the Hall returns this summer! This is a free program. Due to limited capacity and safety requirements, please preregister if you’d like to attend.
REGISTER HERE for T-REX, TUES. 9/1
About the film:
Flint, a city made famous by Michael Moore's documentary Roger & Me, and more recently by the lead poisoning water crisis, has been hard-hit for years as factories closed, jobs left, and crime, unemployment, and poverty became endemic. It's the most unlikely and challenging of backgrounds for an Olympic athlete to make it through. But Claressa “T-Rex” Shields is as tough as they come.
T-Rex: Her Fight for Gold is the coming-of-age story of boxing phenom Claressa Shields, who was just 17 years old when she won the Olympic gold medal for women’s boxing in 2012. Now with a record of 69-1, she is ranked number one in the world heading into her second Olympic competition, the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Summer Games.
Shields was 13 years old when it was announced that women would for the very first time compete in boxing at the 2012 London Olympics. Although she’d only been boxing for two years, her coach, Jason Crutchfield, predicted she'd be there — and that she'd win gold. It seemed an audacious dream for Shields, whose prior aspirations included having ten kids by the time she was 26, and who grew up bouncing between homes while her father was in prison and her mother struggled with addiction. To accomplish her dream, she would need a stable life. Coach Jason and his family took her in, housed her, and kept her focused.
The film traces her rise as an Olympic athlete from the streets of Flint to the podium in London, and the subsequent challenges and disappointments as Claressa watches fellow athletes receive recognition and endorsements while none come forward to support her, raising questions about race, class, and gender bias. Agents suggest she should soften her image, but Claressa is her own person, ready to push the boundaries while fighting for another gold and a better life.
About the filmmaker: Sue Jaye Johnson is an award-winning journalist and producer who spearheaded an unprecedented collaboration between The New York Times, NPR and WNYC to tell the story of the first women to box in the Olympic games. Her series began with a six-page photo spread in the New York Times Magazine. She co-produced several radio stories for the series including Teen Contender, a feature radio documentary about Claressa Shields. Johnson and her co-producer Joe Richman of Radio Diaries gave Shields a microphone and recorder to document her journey to the Olympic Trials. Claressa’s diary aired on NPR’s All Things Considered in February 2012 to an audience of 12 million listeners and won the Peabody Award. Johnson was an early pioneer in interactive documentaries and has collaborated with public television and radio producers to create innovative web documentaries since 1997. She and her team won numerous awards for their collaborations including a Peabody Award and the Columbia-DuPont Award. She has taught visual storytelling at Harvard University and Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism.
AWARDS
Hot Docs Film Festival
Student Choice Award
San Francisco International Film Festival
Audience Award - Best Documentary Feature
Traverse City Film Festival
Roger Ebert Prize for Best Film by First Time Filmmaker
Sidewalk Film Festival
Best Documentary Feature
SXSW Film Festival
World Premiere
“You’ll be knocked out.”
