AllMovie

For this 1997 chronicle of people living in poverty at Chicago's Ida B. Wells public-housing development, acclaimed documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman attempted to record all aspects of daily life at the housing development -- drug counselors, street life, addiction, unemployment, drug education, guidance counselors, job training programs, tense relationships between residents and police, the elderly, dysfunctional families, the tenant's council, nursery school, after-school teen programs, and the activities of city, state, and federal governments in maintaining and changing public housing.