Toronto filmmaker Charles Officer profiles the young people of Villaways Park, a housing project on brink of historic change.

일리노이주 시카고에 위치한 ‘아이다 벨 웰스 주택 단지’는 흑인 여성 인권 운동에 앞장섰던 아이다 벨 웰스(Ida B. Wells)의 이름을 따서 1939년에 처음 만들어졌다. 이후 주로 흑인 저소득층이 입주하는 가운데 그 규모는 지속적으로 커졌지만 영화가 제작된 90년대에는 갖가지 사회의 불평등 문제가 집중되는 부작용을 낳았다. 결국 1995년, 정부는 주택 단지의 철거 및 재개발을 결정하고 실행에 옮긴다.

While gun violence was on the decline in most major US cities, why did it continue to increase in Chicago's segregated communities? What is known about the systems that created the problem, the laws that isolated it, and the policies that abandoned it? Using dramatic footage, including interviews with residents on the front lines over the last 15 years, this documentary opens a rare historical window into the systematic creation of poverty stricken communities plagued by gun violence. 

In buildings where foreign workers lived in Germany, there were strict rules of conduct, defined by the house rules and supervised by the building superintendents. Many rights regarding the freedom of movement, communication and behavior were abused. Interviews with the tenants and with the "orderlies" which point out absurd situations and clashes caused by these restrictions.

David Jones investigates how 1960s council housing came to be built so poorly that thousands later needed to be demolished.

This documentary presents a before-and-after picture of people in a large-scale public housing project in Toronto. Due to a housing shortage, they were forced to live in squalid, dingy flats and ramshackle dwellings on a crowded street in Regent Park North; now they have access to new, modern housing developments designed to offer them privacy, light and space.

Just a stone’s throw from downtown Montreal is the largest social housing complex in Quebec. Built in 1959 where the red-light district used to be, Les Habitations Jeanne-Mance have retained something of the area’s seedy reputation for poverty, prostitution, drugs and violence. But who really knows the projects and the people who live there? Delving beneath the prejudices and stereotypes, director Isabelle Longtin ventured inside the buildings and met the residents.

Destroyed in a dramatic and highly-publicized implosion, the Pruitt-Igoe public housing complex has become a widespread symbol of failure amongst architects, politicians and policy makers. The Pruitt-Igoe Myth explores the social, economic and legislative issues that led to the decline of conventional public housing in America, and the city centers in which they resided, while tracing the personal and poignant narratives of several of the project's residents. In the post-War years, the American city changed in ways that made it unrecognizable from a generation earlier, privileging some and leaving others in its wake. The next time the city changes, remember Pruitt-Igoe.

A 1975 documentary short about a strike being conducted by public-housing residents in St. Louis.

West Estate spotlights the severe housing problems in Hong Kong, taking the spirit of resistance outside of the protest. The damaged walls in the cage-like tenements reflect the many forms of social injustice as well as Hongkongers’ widespread sense of rootlessness. Connecting three stories from different households like puzzle pieces, the film depicts people’s despair over issues of family, sexuality, love, and freedom.

Hometopia is a short animation reflecting upon the ubiquitous but wildly despised British council housing. The animation takes on the tone of a child's fairy tale, depicting the bizarre experience of entering a dazzling estate and later getting lost in an illusionary utopian world.

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