CHAMPAIGN -- Chicago filmmaker Greg Jacobs and his wife were driving by the Metro concert hall one Saturday night in 2005 when something caught his attention: the line of people waiting to get into the Louder Than a Bomb poetry slam finals.

It was made up of teens of all shapes, sizes and colors.

"It was just a very strange diversity for the North Side of Chicago for high school kids and on a Saturday night there to see poetry," Jacobs later said in a Media Impact video interview.

"It also meant there were kids on stage doing their poetry, performing and reading their own work in front of their peers, which is something I would never have been caught dead doing in high school."

That "strange combination" led Jacobs to mention to his filmmaking partner Jon Siskel that the poetry slam might be a good subject for a documentary. Siskel agreed.

Now, six years later and one year after "Louder Than a Bomb" was released, the two will bring the 99-minute documentary to Roger Ebert's Film Festival, which begins today (Wednesday) and ends Sunday at the Virginia Theatre in Champaign.

The documentary, which will close the festival on Sunday, tells the story of four Chicago high school poetry teams as they prepare for the Louder Than a Bomb poetry slam.

After the screening, which starts at noon, Siskel, Jacobs and Kevin Coval, founder and artistic director of the Louder Than a Bomb poetry slam, will go on stage to talk about the documentary. Five Steinmetz High School poets from Chicago will perform as well.

"Louder Than a Bomb" was something of a departure for Siskel and Jacobs. They founded Siskel/Jacobs Productions in 2005 with the focus on making TV documentaries.

Before starting on "Louder," they had begun producing for the History Channel "102 Minutes That Changed America," which reconstructed in real time the events of Sept. 11, 2001, in New York. It won several awards, among them three prime-time Emmys.

Other made-for-TV documentaries produced by Siskel/Jacobs include one about the 9/11 attack on the Pentagon, another about Hurricane Katrina, and a recent one on the earthquake/tsunami in Japan.

TV documentaries, Siskel and Jacobs said in a telephone interview from Chicago, have shorter production calendars than the five years they spent on "Louder Than a Bomb."

Once they decided to make it, they reached out to Coval, who introduced them to many of the 40 Louder Than a Bomb poetry teams in the Chicago area. The filmmakers narrowed the list to a dozen.

For over a year, they visited those schools and hung with the students and poetry-slam coaches. They then narrowed the teams to four and spent eight months shooting them and two years editing the footage.

The two finished the documentary on March 25, 2010, and premiered it before 250 teenagers two days later.

"The kids stood up," Jacobs said. "They said it was the best true-story movie they'd ever seen. It connects to kids in a way most documentaries don't. Teachers say they're emotional and passionate about the film, and the teachers are too."

Indeed, the two see high schools students and teachers as their core audiences.

Siskel and Jacobs also want to see Louder Than a Bomb poetry slam competitions in cities nationwide. They have already visited Tulsa, Okla., to help Coval establish one there, and have received requests from other cities.

Siskel and Jacobs, who have shown "Louder Than a Bomb" at festivals nationwide, are "thrilled" to bring it to Ebertfest 2011.

"I just think it's amazing what Roger and Chaz put together; we're just honored to be part of that group," Siskel said.

Siskel, of course, is a nephew of the late Chicago Tribune movie critic Gene Siskel, who was Ebert's TV partner on "Siskel & Ebert at the Movies."

"Growing up around him, going to movies with him, definitely made me a huge fan of film and movies," Jon Siskel said of his uncle. "Also he just had a big role in guiding me in my career. I had a moment when I was doing writing for newspapers and magazines. He knew of an opportunity coming up to get into TV and film and made an introduction and I moved out to Los Angeles. I started from there."