DOCUMENTARY FEATURE FILM

BARBARA LEE: SPEAKING TRUTH TO POWER

Barbara Lee: Speaking Truth to Power is a film about Barbara Lee, a steadfast voice for human rights, peace and diplomacy in the U.S. Congress who cut her teeth as an organizer for the Black Panther Party and was the lone voice in opposition to the broad authorization of military force after the September 11th attacks. In 2001, she issued a strong warning from the House floor: “Let us not become the evil we deplore,” and today she continues that clarion call, demanding that Congress stand up to a president who has escalated tensions with numerous foreign governments, while seeding division within his own country.

For the past eighteen years, Lee has introduced an amendment each year to repeal the Authorization for Use of Military Force and require a debate on war authorizations. In 2017, she gained traction with support from Republican members of Congress, and the documentary will follow Lee’s efforts to re-introduce the amendment in 2018 and 2019.

While she fights relentlessly for her ideals in the contentious, partisan politics of Washington, D.C., back home in Oakland, California, Lee provides leadership to a new generation of nonviolent community leaders. She co-founded the Martin Luther King Jr. Freedom Center and every year invites young people to join her, along with Rep. John Lewis and other members of Congress, on the annual Civil Rights pilgrimage from the site of MLK’s assassination to the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. With American society veering toward increasingly brazen hate speech, ethnic division and racially charged rhetoric and violence, Lee’s grassroots education and organizing takes on new urgency. As we follow Lee’s path through the halls of Congress and the streets of Oakland and Selma, we will come to understand how the poverty, racism and domestic violence she witnessed in her early years formed her deep convictions, and how her introduction to politics through the campaigns of Shirley Chisholm continues to influence her as a leader.

DOCUMENTARY FEATURE FILM

WAGING CHANGE

DID YOU KNOW THAT TIPPED WORKERS EARN ONLY $2.13 AN HOUR? IT’S TIME FOR A CHANGE!

Waging Change shines a spotlight on the challenges faced by restaurant workers trying to feed themselves and their families off tips by intertwining stories of individuals, such as Nataki Rhodes of Chicago, Andrea Velasquez of Detroit and Wardell Harvey of New Orleans with the growing movement to end the tipped minimum wage. Featuring Saru Jayaraman, Lily Tomlin, Jane Fonda and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the film reveals an American workers’ struggle hidden in plain sight-- the effort to end the federal tipped minimum wage of $2.13 for restaurant servers and bartenders and the #MeToo movement's efforts to end sexual harassment. Directed by Peabody award winner, Abby Ginzberg, Waging Change helps all consumers see the important role they have to play in ending this two-tiered wage system.

DOCUMENTARY FEATURE FILM

AND THEN THEY CAME FOR US

Photo by Dorothea Lange

DOCUMENTARY FEATURE FILM

SOFT VENGEANCE: ALBIE SACHS AND THE NEW SOUTH AFRICA

SOFT VENGEANCE a Peabody-award winning film, paints a portrait of Albie Sachs, a lawyer, writer, art lover and freedom fighter, set against the dramatic events leading to the overthrow of the apartheid regime in South Africa. Shining a spotlight on Albie’s story provides a prism through which to view the challenges faced by those unable to tolerate a society founded on principles of slavery and disempowerment of South Africa’s majority black population. As a young man, Albie defended those committed to ending apartheid in South Africa. For his actions as a lawyer, he was imprisoned in solitary confinement in Cape Town, tortured through sleep deprivation and forced into exile. In 1988 he was blown up by a car bomb set by the South African security forces in Maputo, Mozambique, which cost him his right arm and the sight of one eye, but miraculously he survived and after a long year of rehabilitation in England, he recovered.  Returning to South Africa following the release of Nelson Mandela, Albie helped write the new Constitution and was then appointed as one of the first 11 judges to the new Constitutional Court, which for the past 24 years has been insuring that the rights of all South Africans are afforded protection.

As Albie was recovering in a London hospital from the car bomb he received a note reading: “Don’t worry, comrade Albie, we will avenge you.” What kind of country would it be, he wondered, if it ended up filled with people who were blind and without arms? But if we achieve democracy, freedom and the rule of law, he said to himself, that will be my soft vengeance.”

DOCUMENTARY FEATURE FILM

AGENTS OF CHANGE