How do film and television makers around the world depict public housing? Why is public housing so often chosen as the backdrop for drama, horror, social critique, rebellion, violence, artistic creativity, explorations of race relations and political intrigue?Home Screens answers these questions by examining the ways in which socialized housing projects around the world are represented on screen. The volume brings together a diverse group of interdisciplinary scholars, who explore documentary and fictional portrayals of the architecture of public housing, and the communities that inhabit it, ranging from the 1950s to the present. Examining international film and media texts such as Die Architekten (1990), Swagger (2016), Cooley High (1975), Mee-Pok Man (1995), Treme (2010-2013), Mamma Roma (1962), The Pruitt-Igoe Myth (2011), and Below the Lion Rock (1972-1976), essays within this book consider public and private attitudes toward socialised housing, explaining how onscreen representations shape perceptions of these ubiquitous, often-stigmatized urban locations.

Introduction: Public housing in global film and television - Lorrie PalmerI: Design, architecture and space1. Uncanny architecture: Haunted structures in Candyman and The Pruitt-Igoe Myth - Lorrie Palmer2. Die architekten (1990): East/west ideology, concrete topography and the shadow of plattenbau - Heike Kumpf and Kirsten Kumpf Baele3. Architect and amateur documentarian, Yitzhak Perlstein: Planning Israeli public housing (1960-70) - Daphna Levine and Liat Savin Ben Shoshan4. Pier Paolo Pasolini's Mamma Roma (1962): INA-Casa public housing and remaking Rome's postwar social landscape - Alberto Lo Pinto5. Aerial transitions: Drones and domestic space in the Banlieue - Isabelle McNeillII: Spatialization of race, class and gender6. Precarious homes in Britain and France - girlhood, escape and dance in Fish Tank and Divines - Anna Viola Sborgi7. Cooley High, Cabrini-Green and early-onset rusting in Chicago - Michael D. Dwyer8. Franklin Wong's Below the Lion Rock television series: Community dialogue in 1970s Hong Kong public housing - Chung-kin Tsang9. Within the public housing flats: Interiorization of class drama in Singapore cinema - Meisen Wong and Chua Beng HuatIII: Home screens: Public housing in serialized television drama of The Wire, Treme, and Show Me a Hero10. Ignoring women and communities of care: Public housing in The Wire - Kalima Young11. 'People need to come home': Treme, Abandoned housing and post-Katrina New Orleans - Helen Morgan Parmett12. Public housing, social problems and defensible space in David Simon's show me a hero - Steve MacekFurther ViewingIndex