A Place to Live (1941)

Directed by

Irving Lerner

Genre

documentary film

Country

United States

Runtime

16 min

Rating

6.0 of 10 from 6 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A documentary from 1941 that follows a child walking home from school through a poor neighborhood in Philadelphia. The film shows the cramped and rundown apartment where he lives with his family, aiming to highlight the need for better housing.

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What happens

A Place to Live is a 1941 documentary film directed by Irving Lerner and produced by the Philadelphia Housing Association, a nonprofit affordable housing advocacy group. The film aimed to call attention to inner city squalor in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania by focusing on a child's journey from school to his family's cramped and squalid apartment in a rat-infested slum neighborhood. A Place to Live was nominated for the 1941 Academy Award for Best Documentary (Short Subject). The Academy Film Archive preserved A Place to Live in 2007. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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