![]() ![]() The film opens with Sung and his wife watching It’s A Wonderful Life and explaining how much they relate to Jimmy Stewart’s George Bailey. One is the story of the Sung family, headed by Thomas Sung, a successful lawyer who started the bank in 1984 in part as a way to give back to the Chinese immigrant community. One sequence details, for instance, the curious decision to handcuff bank employees together chain gang-style for processing, one that seems to have been made out of a need for a photo op than any real concern for security.īut the most compelling parts of Abacus use the bank’s story as a way to tell other stories. James talks to both sides, and to journalists who covered the case, like Rolling Stone Matt Taibbi and The New Yorker’s Jiayang Fan, and the facts that emerge suggest that Abacus wound up on the receiving end of a too-vigorous effort to prosecute somebody, anybody, for the sins of the financial world. But the bank’s higher-ups also began cooperating as soon as they realized something was amiss - yet ended up indicted anyway. Abacus was not blameless, largely due to its employment of a con man who used his job to fill his own pockets. ![]() In pursuing Abacus, the New York District Attorney’s Office found a convenient target that offered some good press. That’s the central thesis of Abacus: Small Enough to Jail the latest from documentarian Steve James ( Hoop Dreams, The Interrupters). Where others were deemed “too big to fail,” Abacus wasn’t. But for all the harm perpetrated by big-name institutions, only one bank tied to the crisis ever was ever indicted for mortgage fraud, the family owned Abacus Federal Savings Bank headquartered in New York’s Chinatown. At the heart of it: banks that should have known better engaging in shady dealings at the expense of the everyday consumer - and ultimately the world at large. ![]() $15 for adults | $12 for seniors, students, and educators (with ID) | $10 for Museum and Maysles Documentary Center Members.In 2008, at the height of a presidential race between John McCain and Barack Obama, the world economy suffered a crisis that seemed to push it toward the brink of a meltdown, one caused by dubious lending practices and a housing market that bubbled until it burst. This event is part of the second season of our nonfiction film series, Smile, It’s Your Close Up : New York's Documentaries, co-programmed with Jessica Green and Edo Choi of the Maysles Documentary Center, which zooms in on key moments, individuals, and communities to pose the question: “What makes New York New York?” To view all of the programs in this series, click here. Includes Museum admission and beer courtesy of Harlem Blue. The film will be followed by a talkback with Chinatown activist Don Lee and Sung family members Chanterelle Sung, Jill Sung, and Vera Sung of Abacus Federal Savings Bank. The indictment and subsequent trial forced the Sung family to defend themselves – and their bank’s legacy in the Chinatown community – over the course of a five-year legal battle. bank to face criminal charges in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. ![]() Accused of mortgage fraud by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Abacus: Small Enough to Jail (Steve James, 88 min, 2017) documents the gripping saga of the Sung family – Chinese immigrants and owners of Abacus Federal Savings Bank in Manhattan’s Chinatown. ![]()
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