Peter Kuttner
Peter Kuttner is a Chicago filmmaker, activist, and cameraman. He is known for his early socially-conscious documentary films that touch on topics such as opposition to United States involvement in the Vietnam War, gentrification of Chicago, racism, and social class. He produced many of these with the film collective Kartemquin Films, of which he was an original member. He is best known for his work on the film The End of the Nightstick with Cindi Moran and Eric Scholl, which documented police brutality in Chicago and torture allegations against commander Jon Burge. Kuttner has worked extensively in activism and community service, and was a founding member of activist group Rising Up Angry. Kuttner has worked with many collaborators including Kartemquin Collective founder Gordon Quinn, and filmmakers Haskell Wexler and Robert Kramer. He is also known for camera work on a number of major motion pictures including Man of Steel and Source Code.
Early career
Kuttner grew up in a middle-class neighborhood and attended public school near Wrigley Field in Chicago, Illinois. He attended college at Northwestern University, where he created the film Cause Without a Rebel, a short documentary film about student political complacency on the Northwestern Campus. Kuttner graduated from Northwestern that same year in 1965.After graduation, Kuttner joined the War On Poverty Pre-College Film Workshop program. During this time he taught and collaborated with African-American students from Dillard University in New Orleans on the films Tackle is a Girl’s Best Friend and Mary Had a Little Lamb.
In 1966 Kuttner was hired as a director at Chicago Television Station WTTW, a station that would eventually be owned by PBS. It was here that a visiting crew introduced Kuttner to the Cinéma vérité style of documentary filmmaking. There he made a small number of shows including the arts series "Facets".
Newsreel
After leaving WTTW in the fall of 1967, Kuttner became interested in political activism and eventually reconnected with some Canadian Cinéma vérité filmmakers he had worked with before, who were filming a piece about Norman Mailer out of the Toronto offices of Allan King. During his stay in New York, Kuttner met Melvin Margolis at a film screening, who then introduced him to Newsreel, a New York-based documentary film group whose subjects included the Anti-war movement, the Black Power movement, and the Women's liberation movement. The group had connections to anti-war protestors David Dellinger, Rennie Davis, and Tom Hayden, who would eventually be named as part of the Chicago Seven conspiracy.Kuttner opened a Chicago chapter of the group, recruiting 15 members, including Jon Jost, and established ties with local film collectives like Kartemquin and The Film Group. The Chicago branch functioned mostly as a distributor for the New York Headquarters. The branch released one film under the name “Chicago Film Co-op”, April 27, which documented the 1968 Democratic National Convention protests and police response. They also started production on two other films that were later damaged in a fire. One of the films, a documentary about the Black Panther Party's Illinois chapter's involvement in the Free Breakfast for Children program, was lost completely. The other was the film Trick Bag, which Kuttner would eventually restore during his time at Kartemquin.
Activism and community service
Kuttner was a founding member of the Chicago New Left activist group Rise Up Angry, where he took a break from filmmaking. There, he wrote film reviews for the organization’s newspaper and helped organize their citywide free clinic. They worked alongside the Peace movement, Black Power movement, and Women's liberation movement.Kuttner also spent time working with Upward Bound, a college prep program for students from disadvantaged areas. He also worked on the boards of the Community TV Network and Community Film Workshop, both established media programs for Chicago youth.