AMERICAN RULING CLASS

Director John Kirby / 2005 / USA

Does America have a ruling class? How does one join it, and should one even want to? Written by Lewis Lapham, American Ruling Class explores the US's most taboo topics: class, power and privilege in the nominally democratic republic. The dramatic documentary satire stars Lapham, the renowned essayist, author and editor of Harper's Magazine, as we trail him taking two recent Yale graduates on a programme of society events and meetings with law firms, economic forums, corporation banks, political partisans and media power brokers as they attempt to answer the question, 'Who rules America?' Along the way they meet everyone from Kurt Vonnegut, James Baker III, Robert Altman, Barbara Ehrenreich, Bill Bradley, Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr, William Taft IV and many more, who each lends their insight to the curious trio. Presented in a strikingly original form, American Ruling Class is an incisive and often hilarious peek into the highest echelons of American society. "Literate, witty and provocative... American Ruling Class is that unusual animal, the political documentary with high-wattage star power" - Variety


D John Kirby P Libby Handros, John Kirby S Lewis Lapham WS Krysanne Katsoblis, Julie Goldman TD video/col/2005/97mins

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