Public Housing

The documentary takes up a housing project in Chicago. The project is called Ida B. Wells. The filming was done in the summer of 1995. The team stayed there for five weeks. John Davey was the cinematographer. There is no narrator in the film. No device that adds comment is used. The camera watches daily life as it is. The work of the tenants’ council appears in it. So does life on the street and the role of the police. Job training courses and drug education are recorded too. Elderly residents, the nursery school and programmes for young people are there as well. The account looks at the daily conflict between residents and the bureaucracy. Frederick Wiseman’s American documentary of 1997 runs two hundred minutes.