Inequality Documentary

REQUIEM FOR THE AMERICAN DREAM is the definitive discourse with Noam Chomsky, widely regarded as the most important intellectual alive, on the defining characteristic of our time - the deliberate concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a select few.

Marrying stunning visuals with social advocacy, Rahul Jain's debut documentary — winner of the Special Jury Award for Cinematography at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival — takes audiences into the labyrinthine passages of an enormous textile factory in Gujarat, India. Jain's camera wanders freely between pulsating machines and bubbling vats of dye to create a moving portrait of the human laborers who toil away there for 12 hours a day to eke out a meager living for their families back home. Interviews with these workers and the factory owners who employ them reveal the stark inequality and dangerous working conditions brought about by unregulated industrialization in the region.

On March 14, 1889, Susan La Flesche received her medical degree - becoming the first Native American doctor in US history. She earned her degree 31 years before women could vote and 35 years before Indians could become citizens in their own country.

The trial between Hulk Hogan and Gawker Media pitted privacy rights against freedom of the press, and raised important questions about how big money can silence media.

Director Rahul Jain presents an intimate, observantly portrayal of the rhythm of life and work in a gigantic textile factory in Gujarat, India. Moving through the corridors and bowels of the enormous and disorientating structure, the camera takes the viewer on a journey to a place of dehumanising physical labor and intense hardship, provoking cause for thought about persistent pre-industrial working conditions and the huge divide between first world and developing countries.

DJ and broadcaster Rita Ray travels to South Africa, home to distinctive vocal harmonies that have travelled all over the world. Visiting Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town, she discovers the extraordinary songs and harmonies that have given this country a voice abroad. They have often carried messages about inequality and injustice at home, resulting in beautiful music with a real sense of purpose. South Africa is a diverse nation, and each tribal group has its own musical traditions.

When Grenfell Tower caught fire in June 2017, the disaster revealed a deep division between rich and poor in this part of west London. Now, residents of the community around the tower tell the extraordinary story, 150 years in the making, of how their borough became the most unequal place in Britain. This film reveals little-known stories of how the divisions began, such as the building in the nineteenth century of a huge wall that still stands today. The wall was intended to separate the homes of the Victorian middle class from what was then the worst slum in London.

In New Orleans, New York and London, saxophonist Soweto Kinch meets and plays with fellow musicians and discovers a music that's political, spiritual and rooted in African American history. Soweto argues that jazz is too often seen as a sterile museum piece, whereas in reality it's a powerful, political music which can only be understood through the history of racism and inequality from which it emerged. In New Orleans he finds an older music rooted in the history of slavery. He meets saxophonist Donald Harrison Jr, who keeps alive the tradition of the Mardi Gras Indians, and joins Donald and his group the Congo Square Nation, who perform music influenced by African drumming and rhythms.