Inequality for All
Winter 2014 Documentary series
Wednesday, February 12, 2014 at 7:00pm
Acadia Cinema's Al Whittle Theatre
450 Main Street, Wolfville, NS
Directed by Jacob Kornbluth
Starring Robert Reich
Rated NR ·
1h 29m
USA
English
Inequality for All
In lectures, books, and years of commentary, former Labor Secretary and current UC Berkeley Professor Robert Reich has argued passionately that widening income inequality poses one of the most severe threats to our economy and democracy.
Filmmaker Jacob Kornbluth, inspired by Reich’s book Aftershock: The Next Economy and America’s Future, tackles this massive topic by effectively adapting Reich himself into documentary form. Asking how we got here and what happens if we do not act, Kornbluth and Reich dissect countless issues—among them wage stagnation, consolidated wealth, manufacturing, financial instruments, capital markets, globalization, and election politics—with an uncanny ability to render complex principles digestible. In addition to interviews with other economists, politicians, and experts, Kornbluth documents the struggles of regular working people for whom the American dream is increasingly untenable.
In this An Inconvenient Truth for the economy, Reich presents a compelling, intellectually rigorous narrative bolstered by abundant research and graphics. In upholding rational inquiry over ideological prisms, he encourages us (as he does his students) not to share his opinion but to challenge our own assumptions.
“Despite Reich’s clear-cut answers about how the middle class has been systematically oppressed for the past 35 years, he (as well as the film) maintains a hopeful, non-cynical, and ultimately inspiring outlook for the future. That a documentary about economics could be so personally emotional and affecting is remarkable. And to learn from Reich in this film, as his students at Berkeley do, is a treat and a privilege.” (Katie Walsh, The Playlist)
“Reich is a more lively speaker than Al Gore, frequently working jokes about his sub-five-foot height (his growth having been disrupted by a genetic disorder) into his presentation, and many of the film’s statistical interludes have been entertainingly animated as insurance against eyeball-glazing.” (Bruce Ingram, Chicago Sun-Times)