Why Poverty?

A series of films which ask what it means to live in poverty in the 21st Century.

Famous, Rich And In The Slums with Comic Relief

Lenny Henry, Samantha Womack, Reggie Yates and Angela Rippon experience unimaginable poverty as they spend a week living it for real in this ground-breaking, two-part documentary for Comic Relief.

Steenrijk Straatarm

Commanding Heights: The Battle for the World Economy

The people, ideas, and events that created our current world economy.

Live Aid at 40: When Rock ’n’ Roll Took on the World

A look at the legacy of Band Aid, Live Aid and Live 8 in reshaping global charity and politics. Featuring interviews with Bob Geldof, Bono, Sting, and African and western leaders of the time.

Fin de mois

America's War on Poverty

In the midst of unprecedented national prosperity in the 1960s, poverty was "rediscovered" by American policy makers, media and the public. This series examines how the poor fared during these years and the resultant evolution of foundation and public sector programs addressing the challenges of poverty.

Famous, Rich and Hungry

Four famous volunteers try to untangle the complicated reasons and life choices that lie behind Britain's hidden hunger crisis and are challenged to help UK households find a way out of food poverty

Naufragés des villes

Young, Gifted And Broke

Top Boy

Two seasoned drug dealers return to the gritty street of London, but their pursuit of money and power is threatened by a young and ruthless hustler.

Boys from the Blackstuff

Alan Bleasdale's five-part series relates the further experiences of unemployed Liverpudlian tarmac layers Dixie, Chrissie, Loggo and Yosser, and their revered older friend, retired longshoreman and union leader, George Malone. As they struggle to make ends meet in a depressed economy, and to hold together their financially battered families, they are harrassed by the petty bureaucrats of the DHSS. But the lumbering investigational juggernaut is, both comically and tragically, guided by drivers with only a provisional license.

The Oblongs

The Oblongs are not so much dysfunctional as slightly nonfunctional. Living next to a polluted swamp has left them with the occasional missing limb or mysterious growth, but through it all, this close-knit family sticks together.Sometimes literally.

When the Boat Comes In

When the Boat Comes In is a British television period drama produced by the BBC between 8 January 1976 and 21 April 1981. Taking place between 1919 to 1937, Jack Ford is a First World War veteran who returns to his poverty-stricken (fictional) town of Gallowshield in the North East of England. It dramatises the interwar political struggles of the 1920s and 1930s, and explores the impact of national and international politics upon Ford and those around him.

That Mountain That Sea

Bakekang

A loving heart trapped beneath an ugly facade, ignored and unappreciated by those who fail to see beyond what is skin-deep. She is a woman whose only desire is to feel a little affection from the world that has deprived her of everything she has always longed for.

Last of the Summer Wine

Unencumbered by wives, jobs or any other responsibilities, three senior citizens who've never really grown up explore their world in the Yorkshire Dales. They spend their days speculating about their fellow townsfolk and thinking up adventures not usually favored by the elderly. Last of the Summer Wine premiered as an episode of Comedy Playhouse in 1973. The show ran for 295 episodes until 2010. It is the longest running comedy Britain has produced and the longest running sitcom in the world.

City of Men

The series is based on the award-winning Brazilian film City of God, which itself was nominated for Oscars in four categories, including Best Director for Fernando Meireles. Based on the story of two friends, Laranjinha and Acerola, who live adventurous and dangerous lives in a Rio de Janeiro slum, 'City of Men' brings into sharp relief the condition of children and adolescents in these areas, realistically yet with a dose of humor.

Great Expectations

Orphan Pip discovers through lawyer Mr. Jaggers that a mysterious benefactor wishes to ensure that he becomes a gentleman. Reunited with his childhood patron, Miss Havisham, and his first love, the beautiful but emotionally cold Estella, he discovers that the elderly spinster has gone mad from having been left at the altar as a young woman, and has made her charge into a warped, unfeeling heartbreaker.

The Duo

In a story of two men switched at birth, noble-born Chun Doong lives as a slave and becomes a heroic outlaw, while beggar-born Gwi Dong lives as a nobleman and police chief; then each falls in love with the same girl, Dong Nyeo.