Frederick Wiseman chronicles our culture by effectively placing his camera inside various institutions (see High School, March 1, page ), and letting the personal/impersonal dichotomy inherent in these institutions unfold on film. In Public Housing, he visits Chicago's Ida B. Wells Housing Project, a monument to failure within spitting distance of the city's high-rise financial hub. But through Wiseman's persistence of vision (at just over three hours) we find that futility shares the day with something wonderful at Ida B. Wells: not human resilience-a strained cliché-but basic humanity that is in short supply elsewhere. Perhaps this is because the problems of black poverty are dealt with rather than ignored on a daily basis. Cops are counselors and counselors are cops. The veteran president of the Project is like a social worker running her own placement agency. A kindly exterminator sees to the welfare of his elderly clients, knowing that he can do this at least as well as kill roaches that, left to their own devices, have a life of their own, like poverty itself.