The Pruitt-Igoe Myth is a 2011 documentary directed by Chad Freidrichs, exploring the rise, demise and mythologisation of the Pruitt-Igoe public housing complex in St Louis, Missouri. Once a shining example of modernist public housing, Pruitt-Igoe eventually fell into disrepair and, upon its dramatic demolition, became a scapegoat for anti-public housing advocates in the US, who saw its demise as proof that public housing could never work. In the film Freidrichs combines found footage with talking heads interviews with former residents who relate their memories of the complex, attempting to deconstruct the “myth” that the project failed because of its nature, rather than the myriad of socio-economic problems that were affecting (and continue to affect) disadvantaged people who find themselves in public housing in the US. I’ve chosen this documentary for analysis because of the way it deals with memory, in particular how it extracts notions of memory, neighbourhood and change out of its interview subjects.

The first thing that stands out about this particular section, and documentary in general, is how the interviews are filmed. Rather than situating them in the place the documentary is talking about, or even the individual’s homes to characterise them a certain way, the interview subjects are filmed, fairly centred and almost direct to camera, on a plain white background. This gives us little clue of how we should imagine their lives, or their conception of the Pruitt-Igoe complex; instead, the viewer is forced to rely solely on their narration. Through this, we get a much more unadulterated memory of the neighbourhood as its former residents understood it. The first part of the sequence uses some archival still images of the housing complex, slowly panning across them as they are lit up amongst an otherwise dark St Louis. This image accompanies one resident’s memory of the beauty she saw in the Christmas lights hung by residents all across the complex. Underneath, a somewhat melancholy orchestral piece plays softly, contributing to the heightened nostalgia of the narration.

These three parts all tie together to create this sense of community, togetherness and tranquility in a community, that only minutes ago earlier in the film was vilified as a public housing disaster and criticised for being incredibly unsafe. The music eventually gives way to a background of silence, and the archival images are taken away, leaving just the talking heads on the white background and their memories of safety, community and a sense of true neighbourhood. This is something I hope we can incorporate into our own film: not relying entirely on images to tell a neighbourhood’s story, but rather on words as they can, in some instances, be a much more powerful and accurate evocation of memory.

14:20-18:06 – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKgZM8y3hso