Public Housing

Press

Issues that are all too familiar — drugs, crime, teenage pregnancy, the frustrations caused by government red tape — take on new immediacy thanks to the extraordinary intimacy of Mr. Wiseman’s working methods. Through one revealing, well-chosen episode after another, he succeeds in turning sad generalities into powerfully affecting specifics.

The New York Times

…Wiseman salts his film with example after example of pride and enterprise. For every long-lens shot of men on the corner snorting cocaine, there are shots of chess games, sewing circles and laundry hung lovingly on the line. For every bureaucratese-speaking clerk from CHA, there is a sympathetic plumber or a roach exterminator who can’t do enough for an appreciative tenant.… Frederick Wiseman… has an eye for subtle social distinctions.

The Chicago Tribune