St Catherine's College
University of Oxford, Manor Road, Oxford OX1 3UJ
UK
“The Greens is a personal journey documentary that starts when a white college kid sits down in a black barber’s chair. As Sam and Teddy talk, they realize they spent most of their lives four blocks apart on Division Street – Sam at a private school in Pulaski Park, and Teddy on the other side of the Chicago River, in the high rises of Cabrini Green.
Teddy offers to take Sam for a walk down his side of Division, and so begins a journey through time, back into the contentious memory of one of Chicago’s “most notorious” housing projects. As Sam and Teddy walk they exchange memories: insider vs outsider, news vs reality. At first their memories seem contradictory, but as the two wander through boarded up row houses their stories start to blend.
There, in “The Wild End,” Teddy leads Sam to Batman, a legendary gang-leader, basketball player, and poet who controlled the drug trade in the high rise at 660 West Division. But all is not as it seems. The two-dimensional news-media images of Sam’s childhood clash with Batman’s reality, raising questions about choice, sacrifice, and morality that add dimension to a story long flattened for the screen.
In the end, “The Greens” forces viewers to confront their deepest assumptions about the neighborhood, its residents, violence, and the possibility of finding common ground.