Film Screening of Anne Lewis’s documentary

A Strike and an Uprising (in texas)

Friday, September 7th at 7pm

@ URBAN-15 Studio (2500 S. Presa St)

$10 Presale HERE, $15 at the Door

On Friday, September 7th at 7pm, URBAN-15 will host a film screening of independent filmmaker Anne Lewis’s A Strike and an Uprising (in texas), followed by a Q&A with the filmmaker.

The film is an experimental documentary based in the telling of two events: the San Antonio pecan shellers’ strike of 1938 and the Jobs with Justice march led by Nacogdoches cafeteria workers, groundskeepers, and housekeepers in 1987.

In 1938, half of the nation’s pecans were shelled in San Antonio. When the shellers’ wages were cut from about 6 cents to 4 cents per shelled pound, Emma Tenayuca led an estimated ten thousand workers in a massive walk out. The strike lasted 3 months before the company gave in. While the pecan shellers’ strike is recognized by many as the birth of the Chicano movement, it is shrouded in myth and denial about its iconic communist leader, Emma Tenayuca.

The 1987 march on Nacogdoches was the result of the Annie Mae Carpenter race and gender discrimination lawsuit initiated by the NAACP ten years earlier. Finding that the University and the courts were unresponsive, workers organized a march of more than 3,000 people – labor unionists, civil rights and women’s activists. The march led to a union contract, continuing union representation, and the payment of back wages. While the uprising in Nacogdoches is largely unknown, Texas historian Ruthe Winegarten described it as an epiphany for African American women in Texas.

Lewis explores both events in the same film, using the methods of oral history and, as an experiment, relating these stories strongly to contemporary ideas and events.

Anne Lewis, the Associate Director of HARLAN COUNTY, U.S.A., lives in Austin, Texas. She works mostly in Appalachian Kentucky with Appalshop, where she made FAST FOOD WOMEN (Judges Choice, London Film Festival), ON OUR OWN LAND (DuPont-Columbia);
JUSTICE IN THE COALFIELDS (INTERCOM gold); MORRISTOWN: IN THE AIR AND SUN (Ambulante); and (with Mimi Pickering) ANNE BRADEN: SOUTHERN PATRIOT. Anne teaches film editing at UT Austin and serves on the executive board of TSEU-CWA 6186.

A STRIKE AND AN UPRISING (IN TEXAS) is her first Texas feature. For more information on the film maker, please visit annelewis.org.

Tickets are $10 presale (https://urban-15.ticketleap.com/a-strike-and-an-uprising-in-texas/) and $15 at the door.

To set up an interview with the filmmaker or for questions about the event, please contact URBAN-15 at 210-736-1500 or events@urban15.org.