“Our America”
Sunday at 8, Showtime
½
IN 1994, a producer at a radio station in Chicago finally got his wish.
His dream was to put microphones into the hands of two African American teens from the Ida B. Wells housing project – one of the most, if not the most, notorious housing project in the country.
The producer, David Isay, wanted them to record their lives – or what passed for life in this horrible situation.
“Our America” is their story – made into a movie. And it’s riveting.
The two kids, played by Brandon Hammond (Soul Food), and Roderick Pannell are so good that at first I thought I was watching the real-life kids’ documentary.
What the movie shows in unstinting detail is what these kids lived through and, more importantly, how they lived.
We’re talking toilets that don’t work for months on end; roaches the size of your thumb; broken, filthy playgrounds; apartments in total disrepair; and 10-year old drug dealers – conditions you can’t imagine in the United States of America.
This isn’t your run-of-the-mill TV movie. It’s not done in cute colors and the sets are horribly accurately.
This looks like the real deal and the producers, Joseph Stern, and Angela Bassett, and director Ernest Dickerson did one helluva job.