The story goes… Every year, more than six hundred teenagers from over sixty Chicago area schools gather for the world’s largest youth poetry slam, a competition known as “Louder Than a Bomb.” Founded in 2001, “Louder Than a Bomb” is a youth poetry slam built around teams, rather than emphasize individual poets and performances, essentially demanding that the kids work collaboratively with their peers, presenting, critiquing, and rewriting their pieces.
Louder Than A Bomb, the film, chronicles the “stereotype-confounding” stories of four teams as they prepare for and compete in the 2008 event.
Greg Jacobs and Jon Siskel, of the Chicago-based production team Siskel/Jacobs Productions, are the film’s producers and directors.
The film began a national theatrical roll-out yesterday, Wednesday, May 18th, here in NYC, at the IFC Center, with subsequent cities to follow. It will have its television premiere later this year as part of the new Oprah Winfrey Network’s OWN Documentary Club.
Watch the extended trailer below if you missed our it the first time we wrote about the film: