While not all public housing is impoverished and neglected, the housing projects and estates shown in films are often grim and foreboding places where only the strongest survive. These high- and low-rises become characters in their own right and give their respective films visual frames in which protagonists are both encased and challenged.
Please note that some of the following clips contain material of an adult nature.
Clockers
From old-school hip-hop to stifling summer heat, classic New York film motifs abound in Spike Lee’s Richard Price novel adaptation about street-level drug dealers. In an opening scene scored by DJ Premier’s Return of the Crooklyn Dodgers, we first meet Ronald “Strike” Durham, played by Mekhi Phifer, as he surveys his domain: the Gowanus Houses projects in Brooklyn’s Boerum Hill neighbourhood.
La Haine
High-rise public housing in the France’s Île-de-France region provides much of the setting for La Haine. Director Mathieu Kassovitz juxtaposes rhythmic music, clouds of hash smoke floating from windows, and dreamy monochrome photography with police brutality, racism and riots, as the film’s central characters struggle to survive.
Fish Tank
Like La Haine, Fish Tank takes place in and around a suburban housing estate rather than an inner-city development, lending the film its bleak power. On the outskirts of London, in this case on Havering’s Mardyke estate, Katie Jarvis as Mia Williams sees horses rather than abandoned fridges and needles in bits of wasteland. Her daydreaming and sense of longing for London’s buzz just beyond her reach is poignant.
Candyman
Candyman’s terrifying depiction of an urban legend brought to life in Chicago’s Cabrini Green housing projects elevates the film from potentially cliched territory to genuine horror. Any child growing up in the 90s needed a strong stomach to say “Candyman” five times in front of a bathroom mirror.
Nil by Mouth
Gary Oldman’s first and only directorial effort is as honest and gritty a portrayal of life on an inner-city council estate as you could wish to see. Oldman used the grey and miserable Pepys estate in Deptford, south-east London. Prior to The Wolf of Wall Street, Nil By Mouth contained the most F-words in a single film with 428, most of which seem to be shouted in this scene along with another choice expletive.
Charles Graham-Dixon is on Twitter at @CharlesGD.
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