Anne Lewis

Documentary Films

Social action     Human rights     labor     environmental justice     Cultural democracy

Works in Progress

Rebecca Flores: Under the South Texas Sun

Currently in production with VoxFem, Rebecca Flores: Under the South Texas Sun tells the story of a Texas native, Rebecca Flores. She was Director of the Texas chapter of the United Farm Workers and now works with communities, refugees, the displaced, and the poor. Rebecca Flores is part of the legacy of Latinx working-class labor organizing.

Rebecca Flores: Under the South Texas Sun

On Dying of Dementia in a Capitalist System

An animation film and digital humanities project explore the contradiction between a lucrative business and the humanity of people with dementia, direct care workers, and caregivers. The film is based on a poem written after the death of my partner from Lewy Body Dementia.

On Dying of Dementia in a Capitalist System

Currently On Tour

Un Trip: raúl r salinas and the Poetry of Liberation

a film by Anne Lewis and Laura Varela.

A split screen jazz and liberation film based on the words of “Un Trip through the Mind Jail” by raúlrsalinas, written in 1969 in Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary. The 25 minute short explores imprisonment, community destruction and gentrification, the overwhelming force of cultural memory, and the need for societal transformation.

Un Trip: raúlrsalinas and the Poetry of Liberation

Available Now

A Strike and an Uprising (in Texas)

In 1938, Emma Tenayuca led 10,000 pecan shellers in a massive strike. In 1987, black women led an uprising of 3,000 through the streets of Nacogdoches. The film recovers stories of working people in Texas and demonstrates the power of labor and liberation.
View film website here 

Emma Tenayuca and the 1938 San Antonio Pecan Shellers Strike

 Keli Rosa Cabunoc takes three girls on a trip to Emma Tenayuca’s grave and a mural of the strike. Together they uncover memories of struggle, pride and the power of labor. The short is based on the feature documentary “A Strike and an Uprising (in Texas).”
View film and interactive website here 

Annie Mae Carpenter and the Uprising in Nacogdoches

3 high school students and an educator discuss a labor uprising in Nacogdoches, Texas. Annie Mae Carpenter was fired for refusing to clean men’s dormitory restrooms.  The short emphasizes the power of collective action for racial, class, and gender justice.
View film and interactive website here.

Asylum, Terror, and the Future

A text and video series by documentary filmmaker Anne Lewis.

“The problem, of course, lies with the realities concealed from us. This has always been the case… In the end, however, this is our government, and torture is being utilized in our names and supported by our tax dollars. We are responsible.”

Asylum, Terror, and the Future 
#1: Asylum Claim #2:Happy 18th Birthday #3: Crying Babies #4: Hieleras #5 From military officer to drug lord #6 Nazis Among Us

Anne Braden: Southern Patriot

A fiim by Anne Lewis and Mimi Pickering, produced with Appalshop. 

“A gem of a film, accented with freedom fighters who speak firsthand about carving a path through a traumatized, violent, racist South, to make way for one of the largest and most effective nonviolent movements for social change the world has ever seen.”  Joan Baez

Streaming copies are available from Appalshop and California Newsreel. 

Women on the Bus

January 19, 2017, fifty-seven women met on a ranch outside Austin, Texas for a thirty-hour bus ride to the Women’s March on Washington. 

They brought pillows, blankets, food, and clothing for 3 days. Several crocheted pink hats on the way. Most had never been to a mass demonstration. An informal video I made as one of these women.

Austin Beloved Community is based on the ideas of Anne Braden. Includes an on-line movement history map, social justice animation, and an organizational map. The official launch party was May Day, 2014. More than 30 organizations and more than 50 Austin activists participated in the project. See the Austin Beloved Community Facebook page for more recent information about Austin.

Morristown on Southern Spaces

The late Fran Ansley and Anne Lewis published a multi-media essay based on the feature film, Morristown: in the air and sun. 

“Going South, Coming North: Migration and Union Organizing in Morristown, Tennessee” appears on Southern Spaces supported by the Robert W. Woodruff Library of Emory University. Frequently used at union and immigration workshops, recent screenings of Morristown: in the air and sun include the Southern Labor Studies Conference and the IBEW Hall in Lewistown, Maine. The trailer aired on GRIT tv with Laura Flanders as part of a program about the auto industry.

Interview with A.T. Massey’s Don Blankenship

We join other mining families in grieving for the coal  miners who needlessly lost their lives in Massey Energy’s Upper Big Branch mine on April 6, 2010. In loss and rage, “Mine War on Blackberry Creek” about the 1984 United Mine Workers of America strike against A.T. Massey is streamed on this site. The film concludes with music by Rocky Peck, never hired back and killed in a dog hole mine. The Rag Blog published “The Porcine Man: Don Blankenship and the Sordid History of A.T. Massey.”

In Honor of Public Workers in Texas and Across the Country

To join in the struggle against the forces of reaction and work towards solidarity between the labor movement and the social movement, a trailer is screened from Justice in the Coalfields. Reactionary attitudes are explored in an interview at the National Right to Work Committee funded by the Koch Brothers among others. Watch the latest TSEU-CWA Lobby Day.

Documentary about Morgan Sexton on Folkstreams

Eastern Kentucky’s Morgan Sexton cut his first banjo out of the bottom of a lard bucket, and some seventy years later won the National Endowment for the Arts’ National Heritage Award for his “amazingly pure and unaffected singing and playing style.” In this program, the eighty-year-old Sexton shares his life and music.  Watch the film here.

copyright 2024, Anne Lewis Productions