About

Green Corps (working title) is a new documentary chronicling the people impacted by the DC Green Corps, a green job training program created by the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act; and the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), created under FDR’s New Deal in the 1930s. The film explores how urban forestry and community-based green works and job training projects have impacted struggling Americans and communities hardest hit by economic decline. The interwoven portrait of the people, parks, communities and histories is unique, focusing on those whose struggles and hopes are representative and iconic of the American zeitgeist in the age of recession and rebuilding.

Filmed in an observational, verité style, combined with personal reflections and video diaries filmed on HD pocket camcorders by the characters themselves, Green Corps captures an intimate, firsthand portrait of the complicated landscape that staff, trainees and community members navigate as they attempt to rebuild public parks, local economies and lives. The film explores the relationship between urban communities and their public green spaces, chronicling how the parks, rivers and streams have undergone periods of extreme decline and how restoration work in the urban parks intersects with broader community change. This dynamic relationship between urban people and their natural surroundings is at the core of the story.

Supported in part by the Bancroft Foundation and the All Souls Beckner Fund.