City of Trees

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Co-Produced by Van Jones​
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“City of Trees is honest​. It is real​. It explores the messy truths​ embedded in all fights for environmental and social justice."
- Van Jones​, CNN political commentator, NYTimes bestselling author

"Beautiful and engaging. City of Trees offers a great ‘new narrative’ to counter the conventional formula of the traditional success story and explores different dimensions of social and environmental justice.”
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​— Thomas Walker, PhD Director of the Environmental Studies Program, Goucher College

"An expertly crafted, intimately rendered, verité documentary...the film closely examines how race and class difference functions, and the real tensions between wanting to change and improve the environment.”
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— Giovanna Chesler, Director of Film & Video Studies Program, George Mason University

As seen on

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Director: Brandon Kramer
Runtime: 76 mins​
Rating: NR
DVDCat#: PRDVD3650 
UPC: 602573246375
PreBook: 12/5/17
Street: 1/9/18
SRP: $24.95

GENRES: documentary, poverty, American studies, environment

SYNOPSIS:
Since 1990, nonprofit Washington Parks & People has tried to reduce poverty and violence in Washington, D.C. neighborhoods by improving parks. At the height of the recession, the organization received a stimulus grant to create a "green" job-training program in communities hardest hit. They had two years to help unemployed people find jobs and care for parks in their neighborhoods.

Steve Coleman, a grassroots environmental activist who directs the organization, is tasked with using the grant to hire 150 unemployed residents to care for the city's most blighted urban parks and improve upon the soft skills required to get a job. For Charles Holcomb, the paycheck offers him a chance to give his newborn daughter the life he never had. For Michael Samuels, the job training is a first step forward after a drug conviction marred his employment record. For James Magruder, the program offers a chance to prove that his neighborhood roots position him as an unsung leader.  

What sounds like a simple goal — putting people back to work by planting trees — becomes complicated by local racial and community tensions, and a fast-approaching deadline before the grant money runs out. Filmed in an unflinching and compelling verité approach over the course of more than two years, CITY OF TREES thrusts viewers into the inspiring but messy world of job training and the paradoxes changemakers face in urban communities everyday.