Footage for the documentary "Voices of Cabrini." Shot between 1995-1999, it documented the Cabrini Green redevelopment project proposed and carried out by the city of Chicago. This video includes footage of construction workers demolishing a Cabrini building, Robbins Barber Shop, and the Pratt family home. Mark Pratt also takes the filmmakers on a tour of the neighborhood.
00:00Copy video clip URL Static
0:10Copy video clip URL Color bars.
1:12Copy video clip URL Cut to a vacant building at the corner of an intersection. Cut to a bulldozer removing rubble from a demolition site on Cabrini. Multiple shots of this process.
4:27Copy video clip URL Close up of a construction working spraying water onto debris. He stands outside the closed Robbins Barbershop.
6:17Copy video clip URL Cut to shot of the exterior of a vacant building at Clybourn and Division. Construction workers are seen on the building’s roof taking it down brick by brick.
9:12Copy video clip URL Cut to the same building from a different angle. Cut back to previous shot, except the construction workers are gone.
9:38Copy video clip URL Cut to a shot of one of the Cabrini buildings from its courtyard. All the windows are boarded. Camera turns to see two people walking down the sidewalk on Division Street.
10:40Copy video clip URL Cut to Division Street at twilight.
10:45Copy video clip URL Cut back to the building that was being demolished brick by brick. Half of it remains. Close ups of a bulldozer removing debris from the site that used to be Robbins Barbershop.
13:54Copy video clip URL Shot of the internal view of the buildings that are being demolished, half gutted, and a Cabrini building.
14:50Copy video clip URL Shot of a chair covered in rubble. Cut to the remaining wall of a building. People walk past. Bulldozer drives makes its way down the road to knock the wall down.
15:55Copy video clip URL Bulldozer knocks the remaining walls down.
19:39Copy video clip URL Cut to the same building from a different angle. It is the same building from “Voices of Cabrini raw #5” at thirty-seven minutes forty seconds.
23:35Copy video clip URL Bulldozer tears down the remaining structures from the building site. A group of people from the neighborhood stand watching. Cameraman gets people’s reactions to the demolition. The facade of Robbins Barbershop is still standing.
26:57Copy video clip URL George Robbins’s brother, Moe, speaks with Ronit Bezalel about the demolition. He is most sad when churches and schools are torn down. “There’s a lot of good memories here as well as the negative ones this area is stereotyped for…”
29:45Copy video clip URL Bezalel: “It makes me sad and I don’t even live here.” Moe: “It looks like there’s a part of you going sometimes…” Moe talks about progressiveness in the community.
31:07Copy video clip URL Cut to inside Robbins Barbershop. George Robbins is on the phone. He is heating fish, sweet corn, and apple pie in an electric water heater. They eat and chat.
36:37Copy video clip URL Cut to a man seated in the barbershop. He talks about the Corner Stones gang. Robbins is giving someone else a haircut.
37:44Copy video clip URL Cut to inside Mark Pratt’s apartment. He sits with his family in the living room. He ties his youngest daughter, Myanna’s, shoes. His oldest son, Trevonte, asks him about watching a football game. Trevonte makes lunch.
41:33Copy video clip URL Shot from the hallway, we see Trevonte and one of his brothers in the kitchen. Myanna joins them. Trevonte continues to make lunch for himself and his siblings.
44:24Copy video clip URL Cut to Pratt, Trevonte, Myanna, and Emmanuele walking down a hallway out of their apartment building. They walk through a parking lot into 923 W. Sedgwick.
47:10Copy video clip URL Enter 923 W. Sedgwick. Myanna has trouble taking the stairs. They go up two floors and the children enter an apartment.
49:00Copy video clip URL Cut to a stairwell covered in graffiti.
49:06Copy video clip URL Exterior view from 923 W. Sedgwick.
49:48Copy video clip URL Cut to Pratt standing in a hallway in one of the buildings. Pratt: “Now all of them [the buildings] are in the same condition, because of the water damage. Water is always everywhere, that’s why the hallways are so slippery..and depending on who’s cleaning up the building you either have more garbage or less garbage lying around.” They enter a stairwell and ascend. Pratt wants to show them the effects of water damage. He details cracks and air splits in the concrete.
51:22Copy video clip URL Pratt shows them a long hallway. “According to Chicago building code these buildings are actually in a state of condemned. They shouldn’t be standing…”
52:31Copy video clip URL They enter Pratt’s apartment. He details the water damage that runs in from outside: “It’s time for them to be torn down.”
53:40Copy video clip URL Cut to Pratt at the bottom of a stairwell.
53:53Copy video clip URL Cut to Pratt walking down the sidewalk. He shows the camera crew Richard E. Byrd Academy, his old school: “Byrd sits primarily on what used to be called No-Mans Land in the old days, because you had the Cobras on this side, the Disciples on this side, and the Vice Lords smack dab in the middle. So this was pretty much an open area.” Shot of the space between the school and the community.
55:34Copy video clip URL Pratt: “This has been a safe community, off and on, depending on how the gangs are acting, of course, and the police…ten years ago could we have been walking on around here? No, I don’t think so….”
56:15Copy video clip URL Pratt looks at a vacant building: “This is the Cabrini of the future, to me. This is my future. There’s nothing left. It’s all gone…I’ve grown and I understand that now, that I don’t need to be here and I don’t need to raise my family here in these conditions. But if they can tear this shit down and put a new set of houses right here on this street, yes, I would like to move right back over here…this is where my [grandmother’s] mom’s house used to sit before it was torn down to make room for this place…”
57:41Copy video clip URL Pratt: “They’re tearing down the community and we have no place to go. Yes, that’s a legitimate beef. But my question to my neighbor’s would be: What are you doing to make our community better?…” He talks about resident accountability.
59:16Copy video clip URL End of tape.
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