In November the BBC, together with 66 other international broadcasters, presented us with eight top quality documentary films exploring various angles on poverty worldwide. The documentaries were a huge success, not just here in the UK but all over the world. That’s why the full series, entitled Why Poverty?, is now available online.

As promised initially, five-hundred million people from all over the world will  now be able to view the eight, one-hour documentaries by top class filmmakers about poverty, inequality, aid and trade via the Why Poverty? website and YouTube. The idea is that audiences around the world are being challenged to debate the question: Why is there still so much poverty?

“Why has 50 years of aid not been able to change the fact that 1 billion people are still living in poverty? Why is it so difficult to ensure a decent life for everyone?” says Mette Hoffmann-Meyer, founding board member and executive producer at Steps International, who produced the series. “These questions made me want to investigate and look into the complexities and challenges of inequality through different stories and point of views.”

The Documentaries

In the series, established filmmakers such as Alex Gibney and Brian Hill tackle the ambitious topic of poverty through a variety of angles but always with the help of an engaging narrative. Back in November, DocGeeks reviewed four of the eight films now released online, these were:

Park Avenue Money, Power and the America Dream by Alex Gibney

The Oscar-winning director explores the subject of poverty by looking at Park Avenue in New York, home to some of the wealthiest Americans. Especially in the apartment building 740 you will find the 1% of the 1%, people so rich it is hard to get your head around it. However, a mere ten minutes to the north, over the Harlem River, is the other end of Park Avenue – in the South Bronx. Here, on the same street, more than half the population needs food stamps and children are 20 times more likely to be killed. – Read our review here

Land Rush by Hugo Berkeley & Osvalde Lewat

How do you feed the world? Seventy-five per cent  of Mali’s population are farmers, but rich, land-hungry nations like China and Saudi Arabia are leasing Mali’s land in order to turn large areas into agribusiness farms. Many Malian peasants do not welcome these efforts, seeing them as yet another manifestation of imperialism. As Mali experiences a military coup, the developers are scared off – but can Mali’s farmers combat food shortages and escape poverty on their own terms? – Read our review here

Education Education by Weijun Chen

What does an education get you nowadays? In ancient China, education was the only way out of poverty – in recent times it has been the best way. China’s economic boom and talk of the merits of hard work have created an expectation that to study is to escape poverty. But these days China’s education system only leads to jobs for a few, educating a new generation to unemployment and despair. – Read our review here

Solar Mamas by Mona Eldaief & Jehane Noujaim 

This documentary considers whether women are better at escaping poverty than men. “A girl is not supposed to continue school past the age of 10, it’s considered shameful,” says Rafea, a mother of 4 daughters who is keen to challenge the status quo in her remote part of the Jordanian desert. Luckily for her she is able to receive help from the Barefoot College, which takes uneducated middle-aged women from poor communities and trains them to become solar engineers and so create power and jobs in their communities. – Read our review here

The other films in the series are:

Poor Us: An Animated History of Poverty by Ben Lewis

In a funny and sinister way Lewis’ film shows that the poor may always have been with us, but attitudes towards them have changed. Beginning in the Neolithic Age the filmmaker takes us through the changing world of poverty. You go to sleep, you dream, you become poor through the ages. And when you awake, what can you say about poverty now?

Give Us The Money by Bosse Lindquist.

This film asks whether ‘Live Aid to Make Poverty History’ really lifted millions out of poverty. Bosse Lindquist’s film tracks the history of this idea. “A band of musicians set out to change the world” he says “and now the time has come to ask: What did they achieve, and is celebrity politics is the right way of combating world poverty?”

Welcome To The World by Brian Hill

Hill’s documentary asks whether it is better to be born poor or die poor? 130 million babies are born each year, and not one of them decides where they’ll be born or how they’ll live. In Cambodia, you’re likely to be born to a family living on less than $1/day. In Sierra Leone chances of surviving the first year are half those of the worldwide average. Brian Hill takes a worldwide trip to meet the newest generation.

Stealing Africa by Christoffer Guldbrandsen

Stealing Africa explores the question of what is a fair profit? Zambia has the third largest copper reserves in the world, but 60% of the population live on less than $1 a day and 80% are unemployed. Rüschlikon, on the other hand, is a village in Switzerland with a very low tax rate and very wealthy residents. But it receives more tax revenue than it can use. This is largely thanks to one resident – Ivan Glasenberg, CEO of Glencore, whose copper mines in Zambia are not generating a large bounty tax revenue for the Zambians.

Watch Them in Full for Free

From the UK it was the BBC’s Nick Fraser  who worked as an executive producer for the documentaries. Fraser is also a chairman of the board at Steps International. He says: “Poverty is no longer a question of rich countries and poor countries, with aid and charity providing a solution to the imbalance. Our aim is to kick start this new debate with the idea of opportunity, equality and justice for everyone at the heart of it.”

To see all the documentaries in full, please check out the Why Poverty website or their YouTube channel.

In addition to this extensive programme of documentaries, Why Poverty? also distributed thirty short docs ranging from 2-6 minutes which are available via the same links.

Written by Alexandra Zeevalkink