SXSWORLD

New Allen Iverson Documentary Explores His Hometown's Racial Divide By Josh Rosenblatt Roads, Virginia. Though evidence was spotty, the local sports star, who was gen- erally considered at the time to be the top high school basketball prospect in the country, was arrested for allegedly hitting a white woman over the head with a chair and charged with maiming by mob (a statute dating back to Virginia's lynching days). The 17-year-old was tried as an adult and sentenced to five years in prison. Three other black men were tried and con- victed as well. None of the whites involved was charged. Like Iverson, documentarian Steve O n February 14, 1993, Allen Iverson was involved in a brawl at a bowling alley in his hometown of Hampton James (known for Hoop Dreams) grew up in the Hampton area and last year, he returned with camera in hand to docu- ment what kind of long-term effect the trial of Allen Iverson had had on his com- munity. The result, No Crossover: The Trial of Allen Iverson, will screen at SXSW before appearing on ESPN as part of its 30 for 30 anniversary series. "ESPN approached me about doing a film, but they weren't looking to do the usual profiles," James said. "They wanted stories that filmmakers had a genuine con- nection to or a genuine passion for." James said he immediately thought of the Iverson trial and the way it had split Hampton and neighboring Newport News along racial and class lines, exposing wounds many in the community were hoping had healed. "I was finishing Hoop Dreams when the for James, whose other documentaries, including Hoop Dreams and At the Death House Door (which premiered at SXSW in 2008), are masterpieces of immersive film- making. This time he was trying to shake out the truth of a story nearly two decades old, not one that was unfolding as his camera was rolling. "Crossover is a different kind of film The film posed an interesting problem Allen Iverson dunks in high school. Iverson incident happened," said James. "And though I couldn't get down there to document it, I knew there was an impor- tant thing happening in my hometown. 16 years later, I have a chance to go back and tell that story. What grabbed ESPN when I pitched the idea for No Crossover was the fact that I was from there, and that I would be going back there and trying to tell this story with a focus not just on Iverson but on the community. I wanted to know what it said about and how it affected the com- munity I was from." 34 Allen Iverson in court. Director Steve James those issues to the surface." n The SXSW Film Festival presents the World Pre- miere of No Crossover: The Trial of Allen Iverson. See my.sxsw.com for details. SXSW ORLD / F EBRUAR Y 2010 sial presence throughout his career," said James. "Starting from the age of 17, he's been a divisive figure in American sports. People either love him or hate him. He has detractors and defenders. And that has a lot to do with basketball as a sport. Sports in general are great prisms through which to look at a lot of different things in American society. But the relationship between the country and sports is complicated, especially when you're dealing with issues of race. And there's an intimacy to basketball that you don't find with other sports, a real intimacy created between fan and player that brings has been a lightning rod for disputes over the nature of race in sports. When he arrived in the NBA as a the first pick in the 1996 draft, he was demonized and celebrated in equal measure for his affilia- tion with hip-hop culture: his tattoos, his corn-rows, his attitude, which – unlike the attitudes of so many marketable sports stars – was a better reflection of the streets of inner city Hampton than the wishes of Madison Avenue. "A guy like Iverson has been a controver- than the others I've done," said James. "It wasn't easy telling a story that took place so long ago. Some people refused to talk. Whenever you're talking about a situation that's overtly about race, it gets very hard for some people. And eventually I came to feel like the fact that certain people refused to talk to me was saying as much about the impact of that time as what the people who did talk to me were saying." Since the incident in Hampton, Iverson

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