{"id":5235,"date":"2012-07-13T15:45:21","date_gmt":"2012-07-13T19:45:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=5235"},"modified":"2014-05-23T14:26:14","modified_gmt":"2014-05-23T18:26:14","slug":"dvd-pruitt-igoe-myth-the-2011","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=5235","title":{"rendered":"DVD: Pruitt-Igoe Myth, The (2011)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Return to: <\/strong>Home <\/a>\/\u00a0Blu-ray, DVD, Film Reviews<\/a> \/ <\/em>P to R<\/a><\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>Film: Excellent\/ DVD Transfer: Excellent\/ DVD Extras: Excellent<\/p>\n

Label: First Run Features\/ Region: 0 (NTSC) \/\u00a0Released: May 15, 2012<\/p>\n

Genre: Documentary \/ Public Housing \/ Architecture<\/p>\n

Synopsis: The story of America’s grandest and ill-fated public housing project is told by the tenants who occupied the massive 33-building complex during its short lifespan (1954-1971).<\/p>\n

Special Features: Audio Commentary with director Chad Freidrichs \/ Pruitt-Igoe Site Tour (10:56) \/ 10 Interview Outtakes (7:01 + 2:56 + 4:13 + 7:14 + 3:19 + 4:55 + 4:00 + 3:47 + 6:55 + 7:03) with Play All option \/ Director Biography \/ Bonus 1969 Short Film by Steve Carver: \u201cMore Than One Thing\u201d (30:09)<\/p>\n

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Review:<\/p>\n

Chad Freidrich spent a good 4 years researching the history of what\u2019s largely branded as America\u2019s grandest public housing disaster, but during the course of sourcing interview subjects, scouring archival film & video footage on the modernist structures, and reading seemingly every scholarly and journalistic publication on the massive 33-building complex that was designed to house 12,000 people in St. Louis, Missouri, he found a complex narrative that dispels many of the easy blanket statements and theories about why the state\u2019s idealistic scheme to solve an affordable housing crisis failed so badly.<\/p>\n

Completed in 1954 as the city\u2019s downtown population was dissolving, Pruitt-Igoe was built with a funding plan in which monies came from government bonds and the actual maintenance of the building would be paid by the low income tenants. As long as the occupancy was above 80%, there would be a functioning staff, but with strict income restraints for tenants and dwindling tenant base by the sixties, the building lacked money to keep itself mechanically sound, resulting in a rapidly crumbling infrastructure. A tenant strike tried to force the city to take some responsibility, but in the end the decision was made to gradually implode the complex, a radical move to end both the rot of the buildings and eradicate the criminals who found refuge in the abandoned blocks police refused to enter.<\/p>\n

Freidrich uses a plethora of archival materials, but this story of the public housing project is told by the people who lived there either during its entire lifespan, or at key periods when it shifted from pristine and communal to a dangerous complex in which the city had become a slumlord. Archival stills and film clips add extra breadth to the deeply personal stories of former tenants, making the doc less of an architectural study; viewers wanting more info on the complex\u2019 exterior and interior during its existence can find vivid film footage on YouTube<\/a>.<\/p>\n

According to former tenants, when originally occupied, the Minoru Yamasaki<\/a>-designed complex was a multi-racial, multi-religious community, and a neighbourhood that had its own needs within walking distance with easy transportation links blocks away. For some, the years at Pruitt-Igoe still hold rich memories before crime eventually started to seep in as strangers from outside of the complex started to enter and create problems.<\/p>\n

The changes that occurred should serve as warning signs for any town & city that\u2019s planning a singularly large public housing complex, particularly when its very design isolates inhabitants from the rest of the city. Even from the air, Puitt-Igoe is spectacular and horrifying in scale: it\u2019s a small town within a large city whose sparse greenery wouldn\u2019t be mature until it was too late, and the buildings were razed to the ground in a series of televised and filmed implosions (some of which appears in Godfrey Reggio\u2019s Koyaanisqatsi<\/strong>).<\/p>\n

Freidrich\u2019s doc is also a kind of social archeological expedition, finding and preserving vestiges of the project\u2019s oral history through interviews with aging survivors. Today, the complex resembles a no man\u2019s land not dissimilar to parts of postwar, pre-unified Berlin, but unlike the European city, with the exception of a transformer station and the odd busted streetlamp, any physical remnants of Pruitt-Igoe are less than a few inches above ground.<\/p>\n

The bonus featurette \u201cPruitt-Igo Tour\u201d tracks down remnants of the original streets, parks, and drainage holes, whereas any mounds that appear come from years of subsequent city dumping rather than original building rubble. The effect is chilling: where up to 10,000 people once lived, an entire history has been completely eradicated.<\/p>\n

Also on First Run\u2019s superb DVD is a director\u2019s commentary that\u2019s mandatory listening. Freidrich addresses common questions posed by prior film festival audiences, including some additional known details not included in the doc.<\/p>\n

A gallery of unused interview clips flesh out some lingering questions, including the horrible state-imposed restriction where many fathers were forbidden to live and have any contact with their families if their income exceeded the limits of the state\u2019s welfare criteria.<\/p>\n

The final bonus item is a real gem: More Than One Thing<\/strong> (1969), a long \u2018lost\u2019 short film by Steve Carver (Big Bad Mama<\/strong>, Drum<\/strong>, Lone Wolf McQuade<\/strong>), transferred from one of two surviving 16mm prints.<\/p>\n

Carver\u2019s doc is a somewhat sophomoric profile of a teen who lives at Pruitt-Igoe, and Freidrich made use of some shots, but the doc is more interesting not for glimpses of the complex but in showing a young, ordinary kid who lived there \u2013 dispelling the view that the complex was filled illiterate, poor, dirty, and criminally-minded riff-raff. The short\u2019s main flaw is a severe repetition of verbal quotations that present the teen as more cocky and naively arrogant than the ambitious yet average kid he is, but in terms of film technique, there are some great visuals. Carver intermixes stills, slo-mo opticals and striking black & white compositions with a great modern jazz score by Jeter Thompson, Al St. James and Richard Simmons of Trio Tr\u00e9s Bien<\/a> (plus some vocal material performed by Eddie Eaton) supporting the central subject and the character of the neighbourhood.<\/p>\n

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\u00a9 2012 Mark R. Hasan<\/p>\n

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External References<\/em>:<\/p>\n

IMDB <\/a>— Film Website<\/a> — Wiki<\/a><\/p>\n

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Return to<\/strong>:\u00a0Home <\/a>\/\u00a0Blu-ray, DVD, Film Reviews<\/a> <\/em>\/\u00a0P to R<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Return to: Home \/\u00a0Blu-ray, DVD, Film Reviews \/ P to R \u00a0 Film: Excellent\/ DVD Transfer: Excellent\/ DVD Extras: Excellent Label: First Run Features\/ Region: 0 (NTSC) \/\u00a0Released: May 15, 2012 Genre: Documentary \/ Public Housing \/ Architecture Synopsis: The story of America’s grandest and ill-fated public housing project is told by the tenants who […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[18],"tags":[1413,1414,1418,1417,1412,1416,1415],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8nuyW-1mr","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5235"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5235"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5235\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8977,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5235\/revisions\/8977"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}