Public Housing

PUBLIC HOUSING documents daily life at the Ida B. Wells public housing development in Chicago. The film illustrates some of the experiences of people living in conditions of extreme poverty. Events shown include the work of the tenants council, street life, the role of police, job training programs, drug education, teenage mothers, dysfunctional families, elderly residents, nursery school and after-school teenage programs, and the activities of the city, state, and federal governments in maintaining and changing public housing.

“Issues that are all too familiar—drugs, crime, teenage pregnancy, the frustrations caused by government red tape—take on new immediacy thanks to the extraordinary intimacy of Mr. Wiseman’s working methods. Through one revealing, well-chosen episode after another, he turns sad generalities into powerfully affecting specifics” (Janet Maslin, The New York Times)

This film is part of FREDERICK WISEMAN: LOOKING FOR CONNECTION, in which ten films by the American master of documentary form the backbone of a programme about communities and third spaces.