East Lake Meadows: A Public Housing Story

The film marshals a fine roster of scholars and journalists to talk about the politics, and the sociology, of public housing. Its heart, though, is in the reminiscences of the former residents.

Either a documentary about urban planning and the successes and failures of America's public housing initiatives is going to sound like your kind of escapist intellectualism (or intellectual escapism) or it won't. Those with even basic curiosity will find Sarah Burns and David McMahon's film a smart and substantive thing, worth watching and mulling over in its empathetic pragmatism.