A documentary film by
Greg Jacobs and Jon Siskel

Louder Than A Bomb is a film about passion, competition, teamwork, and trust. It's about the joy of being young, and the pain of growing up. It's about speaking out, making noise, and finding your voice.

It also just happens to be about poetry.

Each year, more than four hundred teenagers from fifty Chicago area schools gather for the world's largest high school team poetry slam—a competition known as "Louder Than A Bomb". There, they compete in a week's worth of "bouts"—spoken word playoffs scored by audience judges. The finals take place before a wildly diverse crowd of screaming teenagers, hundreds of kids cheering for vivid metaphors and creative turns of phrase. It's an extraordinary event—writing as a team sport, poetry as popular performance. And while the competition is fierce, so is the camaraderie. Ask any of the poets and they'll tell you, "The point is not the points, the point is the poetry."

A documentary feature intended for theatrical release, Louder Than A Bomb will follow four teams as they prepare for and compete in the 2008 event. Our cameras will capture the tempestuous lives of these exceptional kids, chronicling the ways writing shapes their world, and vice versa. This is not "teenage poetry" as we often think of it. This is language as a joyful release, irrepressibly talented teenagers obsessed with making words dance. How and why they do it—and how their teammates, coaches, and families help them—is the story at the heart of this exuberant and inspiring film.

Siskel/Jacobs Productions
1807 W. Sunnyside Ave.
Chicago, IL 60640

773.271.9500  Main
773.271.9504  Fax
773.655.0192  Greg
312.953.3271  Jon