DirectorÕs Biography Ð
ÒThrough the FireÓ
Born in Queens, New York, in
1964 and raised on Long Island, Jonathan Hock is an eight-time Emmy Award
winning director, writer and editor. Hock most recently created and directed
the ESPN TV series "Streetball," the story of playground basketball
legends on a barnstorming tour of America. Streetball is currently in its sixth
season on the air. Other recent credits include "Michael Jordan To The
Max," an IMAX film that he wrote and edited; "Pond of Dreams," a
short film he directed for ABC-TV.
In 1985, after graduating
from the University of Pennsylvania with a degree in American History, Hock
went to work as a production assistant for the National Basketball Association,
then spent nearly a decade as a writer, editor, director and 16MM camera
operator for NFL Films outside Philadelphia. Hock moved home to New York in
1995 and edited two independent feature films on a flatbed in his apartment in
Brooklyn. Before long he opened his own production company.
During the spring of 2003,
Hock was commissioned by HBOÕs ÒOn the Record with Bob CostasÓ to create a
short film on any subject relating to social or cultural history. Intrigued by
the recent phenomenon of high school athletes who bypass college to make the leap
directly to the National Basketball Association and the unimaginable wealth the
NBA provides, Hock searched out Sebastian Telfair, an 11th grader
from the Coney Island basketball factory known as Lincoln High School. He found
Telfair to be friendly, charismatic, smart; still dirt poor, but with a bearing
of a kind of neighborhood royalty. Here was a young man at the crossroads, not
only of childhood and manhood, but of poverty and wealth Ð an American outcast
(the poor young black man) with the chance to become an American hero (the
celebrity athlete). Hock spent a day with Telfair shooting the short. At the
end of that day, they agreed to keep working together. SebastianÕs
extraordinary yearlong journey is the subject of this film.
Hock founded and runs The
Reel People Film Project, a program of film workshops for at-risk youth in New
York City, where he lives with his wife Lynn and sons Eddie and Joseph. It was
during one of these workshops, in 1995, that Hock met a 15-year-old student
named Alastair Christopher from the Farragut housing project in Brooklyn.
Christopher was HockÕs co-director and DP on this film.