Live stream preview

Watch this video and more on OVID.tv

Watch this video and more on OVID.tv

Start your free trial

Already subscribed? Sign in

Long Story Short

UR rating icon
Essay Films • 45m

Directed by Natalie Bookchin • Documentary • 2016 • 45 minutes

In the moving and immersive film LONG STORY SHORT, over 100 people at homeless shelters, food banks, adult literacy programs, and job training centers in Los Angeles and the Bay Area in Northern California discuss their experiences of poverty: why they are poor, how it feels, and what they think should be done about American poverty and homelessness today. Numerous interviews by the artist and MacArthur Grantee Natalie Bookchin are stitched together to form a polyphonic account of American poverty told from the inside.

"An incredible work of montage on the collective power of speech."—Maria Bonsanti, Artistic Director, Cinema du Reel

"[The film's] candid but humanizing approach interrupts the prejudice and pity commonly directed toward individuals living in poverty, revealing instead the long-term, systemic nature of economic disenfranchisement."—Jennifer Gonzalez, Professor, History of Art and Visual Culture, UC Santa Cruz

Tags
african-american studies, aids, american (u.s.) studies, american studies, americas, anthropology and archaeology, area studies, bay area, blackhistory2, business, california, communication, communication and media studies, criminal justice, critical thinking and ethics, cultural and ethnic studies, disease and disorders, doc, econjustice, economics, essay, ethics, experimental, expository, food banks, gender studies, health, healthcare, homelessness, housing and homelessness, human rights, human rights1, hunger, icarus films, illness, labor and economics, law and legal studies, long story short, los angeles, medicine and nursing, natalie bookchin, north american studies, ovid, ovid_ca, philosophy, poverty, psychology and mental health, s_0005, s_0014, s_0048, s_0049, s_0058, s_0085, s_0099, s_0148, s_0150, s_0235, s_0263, s_0280, s_0290, s_0306, s_0424, s_0642, social issues, social studies, sociology, the, title_ijklm, title_l, united states, urban studies, usa, womandirector, women's studies, world regions

Up Next in Essay Films

  • A Grin Without a Cat (Chris Marker)
    2:57:59
    A Grin Without a Cat (Chris Marker)

    A Grin Without a Cat (Chris Marker)

    Directed by Chris Marker • Documentary • 1977 • 178 minutes

    Newly restored! A GRIN WITHOUT A CAT is Chris Marker's epic film-essay on the worldwide political wars of the 60's and 70's: Vietnam, Bolivia, May '68, Prague, Chile, and the fate of the New Left.

    Released in France in 1978, restored a...

  • Mother, I Am Suffocating. This Is My ...
    1:16:05
    Mother, I Am Suffocating. This Is My ...

    Mother, I Am Suffocating. This Is My ...

    Directed by Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese • Documentary • 2021 • 76 minutes

    As we float through the streets of Lesotho, following a cross-bearing woman and an omnipresent figure wearing wings, a tumultuous history of sorrow and suffering between the motherland and its people unravels. The through lin...

  • Profit and Nothing But!
    57:00
    Profit and Nothing But!

    Profit and Nothing But!

    Directed by Raoul Peck • Documentary • 2001 • 52 minutes

    Who said that the economy serves mankind? What is this world where one third of the population, in the rich countries, or more precisely the wealthiest two percent in these countries, control everything? A world where the economy is law, w...

×