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10 June, 2008Activist filmmaker Anne Lewis discusses the art of storytelling and recommends that unions develop partnerships with filmmakers to produce more effective labour films.
Text / Kristyne Peter
Photo / Anne Lewis
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On May 1, 2008, Morristown: In the Air and Sun, was screened in a crowded little cinema in downtown Geneva. The film was part of the Night of Labour Film Shorts film festival hosted by the IMF and the international labour movement and Morristown was the feature presentation.
The film, shot in the mountains of east Tennessee, interior Mexico, and Ciudad Juarez, examines the relationship between American and Mexican workers, government, corporations and the rise of temporary work. What makes Morristown so powerful is that the story is carried by the unique voices of ordinary people affected by globalisation, a technique that Anne Lewis, the filmmaker says is integral to "authentic documentary filmmaking".
"My purpose is to tell the truth. I want to understand, to explore and tell the truth as powerfully as I can."
At 59, Lewis has been making films for 40 years. A Washington DC native, she studied filmmaking in New York City and was active in the civil rights movement and anti-war movement, which evolved into a deep interest in political filmmaking. In 1972 Lewis was working with Barbara Kopple on a piece about rank-and-file rebellion in a small Kentucky mining town. The union leadership had been going against the membership on important issues such as black lung, mine safety and democracy in the union. The rank-and-file put forward a candidate to take control of the union, and won. Lewis and Kopple captured that struggle. Months later the United Mine Workers (UMW) contacted the crew asking them to return to Harlan County and film a brutal strike "or someone will get killed". Tensions between strikers, local police and company thugs had reached breaking point. Because of their relationship with the UMW, Kopple, Lewis, and the crew were granted unprecedented access, the result was the film, Harlan County USA, which went on to win an Academy Award for Best Documentary.
"That experience invested me in a profound way," says Lewis who explained that by becoming part of that struggle, she was better able to tell the story authentically. With her films, Lewis does not script or outline, she lets the story unfold through the voices of the people impacted most, and from both sides of the issue.
"Sometimes unions make films and they seem to be less effective than those who make them independently," Lewis says, pointing out, "unions will make a film about themselves and they usually don't expose their own negatives or shortcomings and very rarely allow the other side to have a voice or even explore that content. This can compromise a film's impact."
Lewis recommends that unions and labour organizations talk with filmmakers, initiate partnerships with them, engage filmmakers to learn about their campaigns and provide access to the heart of workers' struggles so that filmmakers can tell their story.
"Unions need to let social action filmmakers know more about their struggles and include them in the organising as well as provide them access. These relationships are important, filmmakers won't be able to get this kind of access without the help of the unions involved," she said.
I asked Lewis if she thought we are starting to see more and more films about workers and the working class struggle as well as an increase in the distribution given the growing number of labour film festivals sprouting up around the world.
"It's astonishing just how little labour films are out there," Lewis said adding, "I think there have been important labour films made, but we aren't seeing more of them, in fact we are seeing less." For Lewis, while there might be an increase in films that address globalisation, outsourcing or downsizing, most of these films lack real characters and real responses. "What is lacking in contemporary labour filmmaking is that there are not enough films about collective action, the ones that inspire people to come together and move forward."
Lewis argues that films can be a tool to further change, but mobilisation is fundamental. "Sometimes people get the illusion that a film can change things in and of itself, it can't. Change can only come from collective action."
Please visit www.annelewis.org for more information or to order a copy of Morristown: In the Air and Sun. Bulk rates are available to unions.
Here you may download the pdf file of the story with illustrations.