Inspired by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett’s best-selling book The Spirit Level, Katharine Round’s accomplished debut feature illustrates a more personal account of how inequality shapes our societies.
The film weaves together seven characters each striving for a better life: Wall Street psychologist Alden wants to make it to the top 1%; Glaswegian rapper Darren just wants to stay sober; Newcastle carer Rochelle wishes her job wasn’t looked down on so much; Jen in Sacramento, California, doesn’t even talk to the neighbours in her upscale gated community – they’ve made it clear to her she isn’t “their kind”. It becomes clear that a higher income doesn’t ensure happiness and inequality hurts us all – rich and poor.
The film travels across the world and into individual lives to see how broad economic shifts have shaped not only our physical circumstances, but also the way we think and what we believe in. It reveals, piece by piece, the forces that have undermined our economic foundations, and led to a dramatic transfer of wealth to the very top: the top 0.1% in the US own as much wealth as the bottom 90% of the population.
The film features high profile commentators, including former economic adviser to Margaret Thatcher, Sir Alan Budd, historian Sir Max Hastings, economist Ha-Joon Chang, Noam Chomsky and epidemiologist Sir Michael Marmot. The Divide plots parallel character narratives together with an archive spine, juxtaposing news reports from 1979 to the present day, with the outcomes of those economic decisions and the thinking that made them possible. The lines are clearly drawn between the big picture and the very personal, producing a new and more human way of depicting the true toll of rising inequality.
Directed and produced by: Katharine Round
Executive producer: Christopher Hird
Runtime: 74′
Country: United Kingdom/Lebanon/Switzerland
Every year thousands of organs are bought and sold on a black market that flourishes in dozens of countries, where the rule of law is a hostage to the dollar sign. Director Ric Esther Bienstock investigates the lucrative and shadowy world of black market organ trafficking.
With unprecedented access to all the players, Tales from the Organ Trade explores the legal, moral and ethical issues involved in this complex life and death business. From the Street-level brokers to the rogue surgeons; the impoverished men and women who are willing to sacrifice a slice of their own bodies for a quick payday; and the desperate patients who face the agonising choice of obeying the law or saving their lives. Speaking openly they reveal a harsh reality, where the villains often save lives and the medical establishment, helpless too, watches people die.
Directed by Ric Esther Bienstock
Duration: 82′
Year: 2013
Inequality blights our societies – the panel that gathered for the Inequality Debate at the Frontline Club on 30 January had no doubts about that. Charles Sennot, of GlobalPost, put the problem into perspective: the gap between rich and poor in developed economies is growing so fast that inequality is reaching developing country levels.
You can watch the debate here:
For Chris Johnes of Oxfam, this is because trickle down hasn’t happened, and that “work is no longer a guarantee of moving out of poverty”. He further argued that inequality damages our economies:
“A lot of businesses would have survived [the recession] if people in the lower parts of the economy actually had more purchasing power.”
Alex Cobham, from Save the Children, chimed in, arguing that inequality also causes social as well as economic harm, as it undermines self-confidence – making it even harder for those at the bottom to move up the social ladder.
Author and journalist Michael Moran, put the problem into a global perspective. He argued that opening up global markets meant that “3.5 billion who were formally in state controlled economies, now compete with you and me”. Faced with global competition from low-waged workforces, raising salaries in developed economies to tackle inequality is impossible.
How could we have let our societies reach this stage? A member of the audience suggested that “mainstream economics . . . is providing a cover for the idea that resources are actually concentrated in the hands of the few”. For the chair, Paddy Coulter, this begged the question “have we got the right kind of economics”?
Probably not, suggested Faiza Shaheen, of the New Economics Foundation. For her, before any progress is made, economists and politicians must acknowledge that inequality is a problem in the first place – it can no longer be ignored.
However, some in the audience thought that a change in political outlook was unlikely:
“[In a society] which is obsessed with the short-term . . . how can you convince people that [tackling inequality] will pay off in the long run? If you don’t get results immediately, people will abandon the policy”.
Others were more optimistic, asking ‘How do we move to solutions? How do we implement policies that serve the collective interest?’
For Sennot, it has to start with awareness – more stories from the ground need to be told. Johnes cautioned the audience, however, that there could be no turning back to the golden age of capitalism:
“We can’t engineer it back again.”
In the end, Moran perhaps caught the essence of the issue, arguing that:
]]>“For the United States in the 21st century, or Britain, to be experiencing inequality levels that are essentially the same as they were at the turn of the 20th century . . . is a disgrace.”
New York’s Park Avenue runs the length of Manhattan before crossing the river into the Bronx. The long stretch between Grand Central Terminal and 96th Street is home to some of the most expensive real estate in the world. Ten minutes to the north, over the Harlem River, Park Avenue enters the South Bronx. Here, more than half the residents receive food stamps, unemployment has reached 19% and children are 20 times more likely to be killed than their neighbours to the south.
In the palatial apartments of 740 Park Avenue, the wealthy are visited by presidents and senators, who are promised millions of campaign dollars in exchange for lower taxes. Residents of Park Avenue in Bronx can not influence presidents, suffer cuts in public spending and have seen the door to social mobility close. Through the story of the two Park Avenues, director Alex Gibney puts forward an eloquent argument that the extreme wealth of a few has been used to impose their ideas on the rest of America.
The American Dream poses an image of America that offers individual freedom and equal opportunity, but in recent years this has been tarnished. Today it is virtually impossible for those born in to poverty to climb the ladder of opportunity. Gibney gets to grips with inequality in America by focusing on how the system of privilege is kept in place and stacked against the poor of the country.
Alex Gibney is an Oscar, Emmy and Grammy award-winning producer and director.
Directed by Alex Gibney
Duration: 70′
Year: 2012
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