"Shame on You!" won "Best Animation" at the Chicago Indie Film Awards

April 15, 2024

Jeffrey Himpele's film, Shame on You! won another award for "Best Animation" at the Chicago Indie Film Awards. Shame On You! was produced, directed, and edited by Jeffrey Himpele, Lecturer and Director of the VizE Lab for Ethnographic Data Visualization. The film was animated by Michael Arthur and Debt Collection Lab founder Frederick F. Wherry is the film’s executive director.

Shame On You! is a short animated documentary that plunges into the visual data presented at the Debt Collection Lab. In recreating several personal stories of people trapped in debt collection lawsuits, the film shows that it is because of hidden shame about debt that their stories are untold, which helps explain why 90% of the cases in the data are either unrepresented in courts or unopposed. The film exposes how the debt collection industry is enabled by shame as well as fear of the judicial system.

The trailer can be view here: Debt Collection Lab.

Chicago Indie Film Awards is committed to indie filmmaking and the language of cinema as an art form. The mission of the fest is to inspire & motivate people to discover the world through the art of motion pictures and indie filmmaking.

Chicago Indie Film Awards was founded by a team of directors, producers, scholars and artists who were passionate about the language of cinema and dedicated the competition to the discovery and promotion of indie films and artists from all over the globe. The festival committee has created a groundbreaking bi-monthly and annual program for independent films of all genres from US and all over the world. The winners of the 23rd edition of the fest was announced on March 31st, 2024. It is our pleasure to share the winners.

The film will be screened in person at Rutgers University for the NJ International Film Festival on June 1. Tickets and schedule are here at the 2024 New Jersey International Film Festival.

 

Shame on You! Trailer

Official Trailer