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March 6, 2023, 5:30 PM – 7:30 PM
ACT Bartos Theater
MIT Building E15-070

 As part of ACT Spring 2023 events, Abigail Disney’s award-winning documentary The American Dream and Other Fairy Tales will be screened in Bartos Theater, followed by Q&A with co-directors Abigail E. Disney and Kathleen Hughes, moderated by the Dean of SA+P, Hashim A. Sarkis. 

Abigail Disney looks at America’s dysfunctional and unequal economy and asks why the American Dream has worked for the wealthy, yet is a nightmare for people born with less. Using her family’s story, Disney explores how this systemic injustice took hold and imagines a way toward a more equitable future.

This event is free and open to the public but seats are limited, please register HERE.

In this feature-length, personal essay documentary, The American Dream and Other Fairy Tales filmmaker and philanthropist Abigail Disney grapples with America’s profound inequality crisis. The story begins in 2018, after Abigail encounters workers at the company that bears her name struggling to put food on the table. Could she, a descendent, with no role in the multinational conglomerate, use her famous last name to help pressure Disney and other American corporations to treat low-wage workers more humanely? Believing her conservative grandfather, Roy Disney, (Walt’s brother and company co-founder) would never have tolerated employee hunger at “The Happiest Place On Earth”, Abigail reexamines the story of modern American capitalism from the middle of the last century, when wealth was shared more equitably, to today, when CEO’s earn upwards of 800 times more than their average employees. What happened? What Abigail learns – about racism, corporate power and the American Dream, is eye-opening, unexpected, and inspiring in that it begins to imagine a path to a fairer future for everyone.

Filmed over a two year period, The American Dream and Other Fairy Tales expertly weaves together Abigail’s family story and the stories of Disneyland workers with commentary from historians, authors, and academics. The film artfully employs archive, animation, and never-before seen Disney family movies. From the boardroom to the union hall, the film will no doubt jump start urgently needed conversations, about how to make American capitalism work for everyone. As Abigail concludes, it won’t be easy, “but with imagination and courage it can be changed.”

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  • Jorge Eduardo Aponte Gómez

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