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Park Avenue - Money, Power and the American Dream

Episode 4 of 8

Film looking at inequality in the US through the prism of two near-adjacent Park Avenues - one an exclusive apartment building in Manhattan, the other in rundown South Bronx.

740 Park Avenue - an exclusive apartment building in Manhattan - is currently home to more billionaires than any other building in the United States. Less than five miles to the north is another Park Avenue in the South Bronx, where almost 40 per cent live in poverty and life prospects are less promising for those stuck at the bottom of the American pile. As international attention focuses on the US elections, Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney looks at inequality in the US through the prism of these two, near-adjacent places, to ask if America is still the land of opportunity.

"There's always been a gap between the wealthiest in our society and everyone else, but in the last 30 years something changed: that gap became the Grand Canyon," says Gibney. Through the story of the two Park Avenues, he argues that the extreme wealth of a few has been used to impose their ideas on the rest of America. By focusing on the residents of 740 Park, he asks questions about the influence of CEOs in Washington in return for tax policies that favour the ultra-rich. What chances do those at the bottom of the ladder have for upward mobility? Can someone who starts life on Park Avenue in the South Bronx end up living on Park Avenue in Manhattan?

Through archive and interviews with academics, political scientists, psychologists, former lobbyists and even a former doorman at 740 Park, Gibney's film is a polemical look at the socio-economic political landscape of contemporary USA.

A 成人快手 Storyville film, produced in partnership with the Open University, Park Avenue screens as part of Why Poverty? - when the 成人快手 and the OU, in conjunction with more than 70 broadcasters around the world, hosts a debate about contemporary poverty.

1 hour

Last on

Tue 27 Nov 2012 23:20

Credits

Role Contributor
Director Alex Gibney
Producer Blair Foster
Series Editor Nick Fraser

Broadcasts

Go to The Open University鈥檚 Why Poverty? website

Watch our specially produced video guides, read the articles and learn more with The OU

成人快手 Four's Why Poverty? Debate

Find out more about the series