Anne Lewis

Documentary Films

Social action Human rights labor environmental justice Cultural democracy

Rebecca Flores Under the South Texas Sun

Vox Fem presents a new film by Laura Varela and Anne Lewis.

“I don’t think you can be an activist unless you can be an organizer. I never felt comfortable talking about anything unless I’d developed an organization, and helped a lot of people say this is what it is. That’s what we did. We organized and then we spoke from that truth, that foundation. I think you need a foundation and that comes through organizing.” — Rebecca Flores

Rebecca Flores: Under the South Texas Sun is a documentary film and digital humanities website, currently in production with VoxFem. It tells the story of Texas native, Rebecca Flores, who organized some of the most vulnerable and marginalized people in South Texas — farmworkers, refugees, the displaced, and the poor. Rebecca is part of the hidden legacy of Mexican-American, Indigenous, and working-class resistance to labor exploitation, dispossession, and violence in a state that prides itself on its cultural heritage. Texas claims to be the world’s 9th largest economy of nations and has less than 5% union density.

In Production

Rebecca Flores: Under the South Texas Sun

Currently On Tour

"Un Trip"raúl r salinas and the Poetry of Liberation

A new film by documentary filmmaker 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 poem expresses lived experience in La Loma (east Austin). The short explores contemporary issues: imprisonment in the jail machine, community destruction and gentrification, the overwhelming force of cultural memory in sanity and salvation, the need for societal transformation.

Un Trip, based on the poem by raul r salinas Un Trip through the Mind Jail

A Strike and An Uprising! (in Texas)

A Strike and an Uprising (in Texas) tells the stories of the 1938 pecan shellers’ strike in San Antonio and the 1973-87 civil rights and union campaign of black workers in Nacogdoches.

Please let us know if you have source material or know participants in either struggle.
http://strikeandanuprising.org

Emma Tenayuca and the 1938 San Antonio Pecan Shellers Strike

For young people 8 to 14, this 10 minute short explores the victorious strike of 10,000 pecan shellers and the life of strike leader Emma Tenayuca. 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

For young people ages 12-18, this 14 minute short features 3 high school students and an educator discussing a labor uprising in Nacogdoches, Texas based on the firing of Annie Mae Carpenter for refusing to clean men’s dormitory restrooms. Black women led a union organizing drive that culminated in a Jobs with Justice march of 3,000. The short emphasizes the power of collective action for racial, class, and gender justice, based on oral histories from the feature documentary “A Strike and an Uprising (in Texas).”
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

Anne Braden: Southern Patriot in partnership with Mimi Pickering and produced with Appalshop. DVD’s and streaming copies are available from Appalshop and California Newsreel. Clips screened at the historic 2010 US Social Forum in Detroit are included under “bio/speaking.”
www.annebradenfilm.org with listings of screenings and discussion.

Women on the Bus

January 19, 2017 at midnight, fifty-seven women met on a ranch outside Austin, Texas for a thirty-hour bus ride to the Women’s March on Washington. They returned to Texas at midnight on January 22. An unlikely group, they were age 13 to 70; white, Latina, and black, CIS gendered and off the binary; rural and urban. Four were undocumented — one had spent 10 months in detention.

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

Fran Ansley and Anne Lewis have 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. We also feel outrage at the barbarism of A.T. Massey and Don Blankenship. In loss and rage, “Mine War on Blackberry Creek” is streamed on this site. The Appalshop documentary is about the 1984 United Mine Workers of America strike against A.T. Massey, the world’s fourth largest coal company. It includes CEO Don Blankenship who recently called federal mine safety regulation and global warming “silly,” scabs, and thugs. Richard A. Trumka, President of the AFL-CIO, expresses union values as well as the brave men and women who stand up to Massey. The film concludes with music by Rocky Peck, never hired back and killed in a dog hole mine. A remastered DVD is available. See “Mine War on Blackberry Creek,” the 30-minute 1986 documentary by Anne Lewis. 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.