Portfolio Entry #18.3 - Class Divide

Class Divide is a film based on two groups of young people from the so-called opposite sides of the tracks in the hypergentrifying Chelsea neighborhood. On the one hand, there are kids like Rosa, who live in public housing. On the other hand, there are the young students at Avenues, an elite private school across the street, with swanky gyms, state-of-the-art technology, and Mandarin Chinese classes. The Avenues students inhabit the same physical space as Rosa and her classmates, but they live in a parallel universe. “The gap is just becoming larger between the two [sides of the street],” Luke, a student at the school, points out in the film. “Even though you may see just an avenue between each block, it’s much larger than that.”

The documentary is told from the children´s point of view, both at the exclusive school and in the projects. The private school kids are insightful but in spite of all of their wealth, they feel tremendous pressure to excel in a future economy that changes so rapidly they don't know how to process it all.