Fascinating documentary tells the real story behind the rise and fall of iconic housing project in St. Louis
THE PRUITT-IGOE MYTH: AN URBAN HISTORY (Chad Freidrichs, 2011)
BAMcinématek
30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Pl. & St. Felix St.
Monday, June 11, free, 6:50
212-415-5500
www.bam.org
www.pruitt-igoe.com
In 1954, the St. Louis Housing Authority completed a massive urban renewal project, Pruitt-Igoe, a thirty-three-building complex for low-income families that was like a city unto itself. Eighteen years later, mired in crime, violence, poverty, and horrifically unsanitary and unsafe conditions, Pruitt-Igoe was torn down, the implosion famously being shown on news channels around the country as an example of the failure of public policy planning. The short, contentious history of Pruitt-Igoe is explored in the revealing documentary The Pruitt-Igoe Myth. Director Chad Freidrichs (Jandek on Corwood, First Impersonator) revisits Pruitt-Igoe through archival footage, new interviews, and a drive past the site where the iconic housing development, designed by architect Minoru Yamasaki, once stood, revealing the fascinating story of what was first a symbol of the post-WWII boom and then a prime example of the nation’s financial and racial problems of the 1970s. “It was like an oasis in the desert,” Ruby Russell remembers. “I never thought I would live in that kind of a surrounding.” But Brian King, who spent his childhood there, sees it a little differently. “It was hell on earth,” he says. Freidrichs speaks with urban historians Robert Fishman and Joseph Heathcott, sociologist Joyce Ladner, and former residents as they chronologically follow the rise and fall of “the poor man’s penthouse.” Narrated by actor Jason Henry, The Pruitt-Igoe Myth tells a shameful chapter in American history, one that should still be used today as a blueprint on what not to do. “It seemed to me that we were being penalized for being poor,” says former resident Jacqueline Williams. “That caused so much anger.” Named Best Documentary at several festivals and winner of the American Historical Association’s John E. O’Connor Film Award, The Pruitt-Igoe Myth is screening for free at BAMcinématek on June 11 at 6:50, followed by a panel discussion with Freidrichs and urban housing and development experts.
One of the all-time-great spaghetti Westerns, Sergio Leone’s dusty three-hour operatic oater stars Clint Eastwood as the Good (Blondie), Lee Van Cleef as the Bad (Angel Eyes), and Eli Wallach as the Ugly (Tuco Benedicto Pacifico Juan Maria Ramirez, whose list of criminal offenses is a riot), three unique individuals after $200,000 in Confederate gold buried in a cemetery in the middle of nowhere. Nearly 20 minutes of never-before-seen footage added to the film several years ago, with Wallach and Eastwood overdubbing brand-new dialogue, so if you haven’t seen it in a while, it might just be time to catch it again, this time on the big screen as part of Film Forum’s impressive “Spaghetti Westerns” series. Ennio Morricone’s unforgettable score and Torino delli Colli’s gorgeous widescreen cinematography were also marvelously enhanced; their work in the scene when Tuco first comes upon the graveyard will make you dizzy with delight. And then comes one of the greatest finales in cinema history. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly is screening at Film Forum on June 9, 10, 12, and 21, with the series continuing with such well-known classics and under-the-radar gems as Damiano Damiani’s A Bullet for the General, Giulio Petroni’s Death Rides a Horse, Monte Hellman’s China 9, Liberty 37, and Giulio Questi’s Django Kill . . . If You Live, Shoot!
For generations, gauchos have been roaming through southern Chile, living off the land along the Baker and Pascua Rivers. But the lifestyle of these South American cowboys, as well as their surrounding environment, is being threatened by the potential construction of five dams along the two rivers. In Patagonia Rising, filmmaker Brian Lilla examines the hard-fought battle currently going on between the ranchers and farmers and hidroAysén, the global corporation behind the massive project. Lilla (Tale of Two Bondage Models, Ghetto Fabulous) speaks to such families as the Sanchezes, the Sandovals, and the Arratias, whose livelihoods and culture are being threatened; glaciologists who point out the environmental damage the dams can cause, especially given the climate change that is wreaking havoc in Patagonia; a hidroAysén general manager who explains that the project will bring much-needed energy resources to Chile while also being environmentally sound and sustainable; and other scientific experts and activists, as well as a few gauchos who are in favor of the dams. Patagonia Rising features beautiful shots of the region, but they are carefully situated to play on viewers’ sympathies in a mostly one-sided documentary earnestly narrated with a lack of authority by Carla Wilkins. The film comes off as a sounding board for the anti-dam movement, but it still raises important points about the future of the area and the possibility of developing alternative energy sources that would be more friendly to the land and its inhabitants.
There’s something inherently creepy about The Woodmans, C. Scott Willis’s documentary about an intriguing family of artists. For the first half of his debut theatrical release, Willis, an eleven-time Emmy winner who has spent most of his career working for television news organizations, speaks with successful ceramic sculptor Betty Woodman, who had a 
Bud Cort (Harold) and Ruth Gordon (Maude) are magnificent in this glorious black comedy from director Hal Ashby (The Last Detail, Shampoo, Being There) and writer Colin Higgins. Harold is an eighteen-year-old rich kid obsessed with death, regularly flirting with suicide. Maude is a fun-loving, free-spirited senior citizen approaching her eightieth birthday. Ashby throws in just the right amount of post-1960s social commentary, including a very funny antiwar scene, without becoming overbearing, as this could have been a maudlin piece of sentimental claptrap, but instead it’s far from it. Even the Cat Stevens soundtrack (“If You Want to Sing Out, Sing Out,” “Tea for the Tillerman,” “Where Do the Children Play?”) works. Harold and Maude is a tender, uproarious, bittersweet tale that is one of the best of its kind, completely unforgettable, enlightening, and, ultimately, life-affirming in its own odd way. Harold and Maude is screening June 8 & 9 as part of the Museum of the Moving Image series “Paramount in the 1970s,” a month of films from the studio that changed the shape of American popular cinema during the decade that began with the Vietnam War and ended with the Reagan revolution. The series, which celebrates Paramount’s centennial, also includes such terrific films as Peter Bogdanovich’s Paper Moon, Roman Polanski’s Chinatown and The Tenant, John Schlesinger’s Marathon Man, and Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation.