The teenager Cory seemed to be recovering again, when he suddenly dies of an overdose. The day before his funeral, his friends and family get together to remember is life, and their thoughts about life are assembled in a unique piece of Americana in the exceptional 'Putty Hill'. Matt Porterfield's starting-point was both this story and a desire to make a film about the run-down working-class neighbourhood Putty Hill in Baltimore. And with the actors from another abandoned project, 'Putty Hill' has become a true guerilla film: shot with the means that were available, gliding between documentary and fiction, between the characters and the actors who play them, and between the city and its stories. With the sudden death of the teenager, Porterfield catches his characters at a vulnerable moment, and even if we are in a suburban world of uprooted teenagers, skaters, drug-addicts and tattoos that reach far up the neck, the result is a surprisingly affectionate and generous film, which takes its time to listen. This is not the inversion of the American dream, as we often see in these types of settings, but a new American dream. And it is so vulnerable, that Cory's friends almost don't dare formulate it, and yet it is so essential to survive.
