Green Chimneys, director Constance Marks, Documentary. USA. Colour. 98 minutes. Showing again 6.30 p.m. May 5, Little Theatre.

Green Chimneys is a seamless documentary in which the director and crew have managed to stay as unobtrusive as possible from their subject matter -- abused inner-city children at a unique facility.

It's definitely worth a watch. Ms Marks and her crew's superb skills are evident throughout the documentary. She begins by outlining the general nature of the problem -- 500,000 children removed from abused homes, and distills it down to one year in the lives of three boys at a residential treatment centre in Brewster, New York.

Green Chimneys is a unique facility located on 150 acres which is home to about 100 children, boys between the ages of 6 and 21 who have not been able to fit into foster care.

As one of the social workers says, Green Chimneys is the last stop for many of the children. They are mostly the product of homelessness, broken families, and parental drug and alcohol abuse.

The staff at Green Chimneys attempt to use farm animals at the facility as a means of helping the children form stable relationships. The animals are a means for the social workers to connect with the children and get them to find some trust and love in a world that has dealt them an unfair hand.

Ms Marks has chosen her three subjects well. They're essentially street smart children, articulate in their own ways, and frighteningly knowledgeable about the world they've come from.

Anthony, 13, is the most articulate, but also the most disturbed of the three.

We don't quite know his history or just what he'd done to land himself at Green Chimneys but we know he's had a record of violence and confrontation, some of which we see in his relationships with the other boys. We meet him two months after his drug-abusive mother has died of AIDS.

Mike, 11, is the product of a rape and was given up by his mother at the age of two, and bounced around foster care. He is on the verge of being discharged but only if he and his mother can forge a caring relationship. Ms Marks tracks that progress, or lack thereof.

Eddie, 12, is at Green Chimneys due to his parents' homelessness, drug addiction and subsequent abuse of him. His song `You're a part of me/Mom and dad you're a part of me/God willing you're a part of me` expresses the longing all the children have for reunion with their families, even though those fathers and mothers are the very ones who hurt and abused them. And Eddie's father and mother look particularly dangerous.

There is tasteful music and minimum narration through out the documentary. The expertise of the crew is obvious. Co-director and editor Bob Eisenhardt has done a wonderful job of sifting though hundreds of hours of filming and cutting it down to a story that flows effortlessly from one scene to the next.

Ms Marks and director of photography James Miller must be commended for their dedication in devoting one year to filming and getting the social workers, the children and their parents to open up to the all-seeing eye of the camera. The trust she has built, part of the art of the documentary, is obvious in the honesty of the exchanges.

AHMED ELAMIN COMFORT -- Eddie with `Tigger' in Green Chimneys.

MOVIES MPC