Images in Action: The Interrupters

The Interrupters is a story about three young people trying to break the cycle of violence in their Chicago neighborhood. The film follows Ameena Matthews (left), Cobe Williams and Eddie Bocanegra and the work they do for CeaseFire. The organization was founded by Gary Slutkin, an epidemiologist who believes that the spread of violence is like the spread of disease. Ameena, Cobe and Eddie, who are haunted by their own violent histories, work as ''violence interrupters," as they try to intervene in conflicts before they explode.

The film was won twelve documentary awards, most recently Best Documentary at the 2012 Independent Spirit Awards, and has been an official selection at Sundance, Sheffield and SXSW Film Festivals.

The modern problem of an epidemic of youth violence and Matthais Grunewald's 500-year old masterpiece make an interesting pair. We are always delighted when old master paintings are used to conceptualize topics not generally associated with fine art, so we asked Emily Hart, the film's researcher, why this image was chosen.

"The Temptation of St. Anthony from the Isenheim Altarpiece was used in a section of the film that describes the genesis of CeaseFire and the premise that violence is a learned behavior and transmitted like a disease.  The detail in the painting shows someone covered in boils and infected with the plague.  The violence interrupters in CeaseFire consider themselves to be like health workers stopping the spread of a great plague, but the plague they address is violence.  We were struck by the visceral way in which the painting portrayed the pain and desperation of suffering from the plague.  It made it the perfect visual metaphor for equating disease and violence."

- Emily Hart, Freelance Researcher

Take a closer look at details from the Isenheim Altarpiece.

Read more about The Interrupters.