Private Project

No Bad Guys

Englewood in Southside Chicago began to be called Chiraq when there were more deaths reported there, annually, than US soldiers killed in the combined wars of Iraq and Afghanistan. George Gittoes who has spent the last 50 years covering wars as an artist, filmmaker and photographer turns his attention to the US and spends three years on May Block, the epicentre of gun violence. The situation gets too real when three of the characters are killed during filming. Between January and October 2021 there were 700-gun deaths and 3,766 wounding’s, doubling the casualty figures of 2018, when filming began.
No Bad Guys is an intimate and immersive, character-based film following the lives of both the gun carrying perpetrators and the bereaved families of the victims. When asked “Who are the Bad Guys doing this to you?” the repeated answer is “There are no Good Guys or Bad Guys – it is other guys on other blocks just like us.” Everyone wants to see an end to the violence while the cycle of revenge turns relentlessly.

May Block has a Guardian Angel, Kaylyn Prior who won the Mario Make me a model competition for her beatify and talent only to be killed on the street corner a few days after her triumph. The depth of feeling about her loss has not faded. The most conflicted of the film’s characters, Headshot, says “Kaylyn was smart, she could have done anything she put her mind to. She could have been the first black woman President.”

Southside Chicago has exported the greatest music the world has known. from Willie Dixon and Muddy Waters to Diana Washington and Jennifer Hudson. Music Director Hellen Rose has created a rich soundtrack for No Bad Guys showcasing local musicians from the young upcoming street freestyling stars Lil Mac and Lil Dave to Tamari T with his Exotic Funk band. The film builds to the hope offered in a converted firehouse where the Music Box foundation work to find a solution to the violence by replacing guns with guitars.
The hope of the film is that audiences will grow to love the characters and see that there are no bad guys, just people like them seeking a way out of the violence

  • GEORGE GITTOES
    Director
    Soundtrack To War, Rampage, Miscreants of Taliwood, Love City Jalalabad, White Light
  • George Gittoes
    Writer
  • Hellen Rose
    Producer
    White Light, Haunted Burqa, Love City Jalalabad
  • Project Type:
    Documentary
  • Runtime:
    1 hour 26 minutes
  • Completion Date:
    March 1, 2022
  • Production Budget:
    800,000 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    Australia
  • Country of Filming:
    United States
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    4k
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • Digital Cinema Package:
    Unavailable
Director Biography - GEORGE GITTOES

2001 Receives Centenary Medal from the Australian Government for ‘service as an internationally renowned artist’
2008 Receives an honorary doctorate of letters from the University of New South Wales, Sydney
2013 The Bassel Shehade Award for Social Justice (awarded at Syracuse University, New York)
2014 Receives Award for 'Services to the Community' from the Premier of New South Wales
2015 Receives The Sydney Peace Prize
2018 Only two time recipient of the The Bassel Shehade Award for Social Justice (awarded at Syracuse University, New York)
2020 Awarded Honorary Membership to the Australian Peacekeeper and Peacemaker Veterans Association.
Filmography
1981 Refined Fire (Experimental Short, director). Explores the issue of nuclear war and uses special effects created in-camera to extend the possibilities of painting with light on film. Nominated for Best Experimental Film at the Australian Film Institute awards; wins silver medal at the Hiroshima Film Festival, Japan; finalist in the Baltimore Film festival; and wins best cinematographer and best special effects at the Armidale Film Festival, NSW.
1982 Tracks of the Rainbow (Documentary Short, director and cinematographer). Documents a group of six Aboriginal teenagers from southern urbanised areas of Australia as they follow the tracks of the Rainbow Serpent through the Northern Territory, from Uluru (Ayers Rock) to Arnhem Land and across the sea to Melville Island.
1985 Frontier Women (Documentary, director and producer). Examines the lives of two women living in outback Northern Territory. Broadcast on Channel 10 in Australia and in the United States.
Warriors and Lawmen (Documentary, director and producer). Shot in the Northern Territory; covers two criminal cases from 1933 and 1968. Examines the relationship between European and traditional Aboriginal laws. Broadcast on ABC Television and in the United States.
Unbroken Spirit (Documentary, director and producer). Examines the lives of stockmen working on one of the largest cattle stations in Australia. Broadcast by the Channel 7 network in Australia, BBC Television in the United Kingdom and in the United States.
1987 Bullets of the Poets (Documentary, director and producer). Filmed on location in Nicaragua. Focuses on six women who recount their struggles during the Sandinista Revolution and their reliance on writing poetry in order to cope.
Visions in the Making (Documentary, director and producer) for ABC Television. Features
six of Australia’s leading artists working in painting, photography, fashion design, holography, traditional Aboriginal art and cinematography. Explores the way their practice responds to and interacts with the Australian landscape.
2005 Soundtrack to War (Documentary, director and cinematographer). Filmed throughout 2003-2004, Gittoes bypassed the U.S. military's media lockdown on the war in Iraq to capture an authentic account of the human experience of the war. Gittoes interviewed American soldiers deployed in Iraq to create an account of the role of music in the contemporary battlefield. Premieres on ABC Television. Screens at the Sydney and Berlin film festivals followed by cinema releases in Australia, the United States and Europe. Screens at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
2006 Rampage (Documentary, director). Miami-based subculture of a group of African- American soldiers, and an exploration of hiphop’s musical innovations Jury Finalist, Raindance Film Festival
2009 The Miscreants of Taliwood (Documentary, director and writer). Shot in terror central in Pakistan, where Gittoes decides to shoot a local Pashto telie film right under the nose of the Taliban’s anti-entertainment forces. A clash of fundamentalism and entertainmentand a surprising, terrifying journey, into the forbidden zones of Pakistan’s explosive North West Frontier. Screens at Museum of Modern Art, New York
2010 Moonlight, Starless Night and The Flood (Documentary series, director and producer). Shot on location in Pakistan’s tribal belt. Funded by an international aid agency to assist in the restoration of the Pashtun film industry by directing and producing three Pashtun-language drama features
2013 Love City, Jalalabad (Documentary, director and writer). A wild and funny documentary showing how the progressive youth of Afghanistan are rejecting the use of armed force and see film production as an alternative means of bringing peace and social change to their war-torn and occupied country. Winner 'Best Documentary' and 'Socially Relevent Film' awards at NYC's Winter Film Awards.
2015 Snow Monkey (Documentary, director and writer). Epic portrait of daily life in Jalalabad; Gittoes recruited gangs of war-damaged children to shoot local, Pashto-style films: vibrant, colorful and infused with the violence they experience on a daily basis.
2018 White Light (Feature Documentary) Screened Nationally on ABC TV Australia. Shot with the community of South Side Chicago - Englewood - May Block Chicago.USA focussing on gun violence in the area

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Director Statement

GEORGE GITTOES APRIL 2022
I see my role when directing a documentary as not unlike working on a drama with actors. It is my job to make the characters shine and feel good about being on camera. At 72 years of age, with a lifetime of documentary making behind me, I do not need to feel ‘in charge’. From the start I assure all the participants that they should enjoy ownership of the film and that I am there to help give them their voice. All the characters in No Bad Guys staunchly mistrust the media, accusing them of misrepresenting the community of the gun plagued Southside as ‘gangbangers’, a term they feel should be banned like the ‘N’ word. They refuse to refer to themselves as a gang and either call themselves ‘brothers’ or simply ‘May Block’. With each phase of editing the principles have been invited to comment as well as community leaders and I have acted on their suggestions to the make sure that this a film represents them. All the scenes are shot with a crew of two, either myself and Pakistani Cameraman Waqar Alam or myself and my partner Hellen Rose. We use two cameras and manage the sound simultaneously with the cinematography. Everything is handheld. I interview with the camera viewfinder over one eye and the lens pointed directly into the face of the interviewee, one on one, enabling an intimate exchange of conversation. We do not shoot retakes and keep situations as informal and spontaneous as possible. It we miss something we see that as being like ‘dropping the ball’ in a sporting tournament and rarely go back to recapture what we missed. All the people in the film have their own camera phones and are very media savvy. They continually post social media. This has enabled us to source their own recorded footage. On the day of Police Bust we have been able to intercut between their phone cameras and ours. We make use of Security camera footage of actual events where the film characters have been involved in shootings and the like.
The aim of NO BAD GUYS is to show that those who the media have consistently stereotyped as ‘bad guys’ are likeable human beings caught up in a cycle of violence they want to escape. NO BAD GUYS is a plea for people everywhere to try to understand the dilemma of communities terrorised by gun violence. By understanding the problem, we can all find ways to help work towards solutions. The film ends with the positive message:” put down the guns and take up guitar’s ! Substituting art , music and creativity in place of war.”