Larkin hopes that “Queensbridge: The Other Side,” the documentary he is helping edit and produce, will help others see the complex the way he has come to see it. “We’re hoping that this will be the beginning of a sociological approach of how to tell the story of projects in America,” he said.

   To be sure, the 96-building complex— which officially has 15,000 residents but which locals say has thousands more—has produced more than its fair share of dope fiends, crack heads and gang members.

   But the days when residents heard gunshots every night are long gone. And with its low rents and its close proximity to Manhattan and multimillion-dollar Long Island City developments, Queensbridge is starting to look like the place it was when it first opened in 1939.

   “This was a great place,” Larkin said. “It had a little bit of a problem, and it is a great place again.”

   The film is the brainchild of Selena Blake, a model and actress who has lived in the complex for nearly 20 years. “I want to raise public awareness that Queensbridge is not a bunch of thugs and drug dealers,” she said.

   Thinking the project would take a few weeks to film, Blake hired a camera crew at the cost of $1,000 a day. They lasted a week, until she could no longer afford to pay them and had to start filming on her own.

   Two years later, Blake has compiled 75 hours of interviews with current and former Queensbridge residents, including state Supreme Court Judge Carol Robinson Edmead, Mark Samowitz of Broadway Stages sound stage, Assemblywoman Catherine Nolan and hip-hop luminaries Nas (Nasir Jones), Havoc and Marlon (Marley Mar) Williams.

   It has not been easy. She works about 18 hours a day, both on the film and at various media and catering jobs. And she has sunk about $100,000 of her own money into the film, maxing out several credit cards and surviving several eviction notices in the process.

   But every time she thinks about giving up, someone she’s interviewed calls her to tell her how thankful they are. “There’s a power that is higher than me navigating this project,” Blake said. “You’re not doing this by chance or mistake. You were meant to do this.”

   The film is divided into three sections: past, present and future. It starts with old photographs and interviews with elderly former residents, most of whom are Jewish or Italian-American. The footage shows a place where children of different races played together in harmony, where poor children did not know they were poor and where white police officers were godparents to black children. “I think everyone should grow up in the projects,” one elderly woman says.

   Then came Vietnam and the civil rights era, when heroin and later crack cocaine ripped the fabric of the community apart, when “white” friends became “whitey.” The film moves to a new generation of residents, mostly African-American, who learned not to trust the police. Queensbridge stopped looking like a rung on the ladder into the middle class. Blake herself was once caught in a shootout between police and gang members. “The most inspiration I had from Queensbridge was to get out of here,” says an interviewee who lived there at the time.

   Even during the worst of times, Queensbridge has been an astonishing incubator of talent, from professional athletes and the originators of what became rap and hip hop, to ministers, actors, Harvard graduates and politicians. Larkin calls it “the sophistication of the street.”
   “In many ways, the projects are a more evolved and developed form of civilization than the suburbs or rural areas,” he said. “There’s so much competition here that you have to stand out.” Views of the Manhattan skyline just across the East River, he added, no doubt spurs that drive.

   But these extraordinary stories have been for the most part buried under an avalanche of news about murders, gang wars and drug busts. That narrative has stuck, despite real change in the last decade.

   “The narrative is that I’m going to walk in here and they’re going to kill me,” Larkin said, recalling his own thoughts when he first started visiting Queensbridge last year.