Morristown - winner of 2008 Jack Spadaro Award
Recently the Appalachian Studies Association selected “Morristown” as the winner of the 2008 Jack Spadaro Award. Jack Wright at Ohio University is the administrator for the award. Congrats to Ms. Lewis and the ASA for honoring such a fine film.
Anne Lewis has finally completed “Morristown - In the air and sun,” another masterpiece about Appalachia from Appalshop. The film took almost a decade to make, traveling from Mexico to Morristown, Tennessee, showing the amazing links between the people who are virtual slaves of a global economy. The rooted people of Tennessee are shown as victims of the toxic capitalist system as much as the rootless workers from Mexico, forced to flee rather than starve. It is a touching, exciting, relevant film.
I really enjoyed the interviews with both groups of workers, and even the local developers in Morristown. I also was moved to tears by a Mexican mother saying that she had lost all hope because of her situation in Mexico. She lives with her family in a cardboard house even though both her husband and daughter work in a maquiladora local American-owned factory. ( I have traveled throughout Mexico twice, and know that few people in the US realize that the country has only one navigable river - essential for any real economic development.)
The most positive event in the film takes place at the end when Morristown chicken factory workers vote to unionize, winning essential rights including going to the bathroom, etc. It is very important that this victory is documented - just as Shawn Bennett and Barbara Kopple documented the victory at Ravenswoood in WV in their films.
This film was shown with Shawn Bennett’s great new film, “The Battle of Local 5668″ at the premiere labor film festival in the land, Reel Work. It was also recently shown in Atlanta at a national conference of people who want to make America better. I will program the film at WV’s own labor film festival in Paden City during Labor Day weekend 2007. I will also let everyone in the WV Labor History Association know about the film and tells WV union leaders about it. Locally, just this week the WV Dept. of Labor announced that they would be hiring new inspectors to investigate the hiring of undocumented people for the construction of tax-supported buildings in the state. Even in the state with the fewest percentage of foreign born citizens, some of the estimated 12 million undocumented workers are being brought to WV by ruthless companies creating a new form of slavery. This film shows that workers from both sides of the border have to learn about each other, and show solidarity.
As an aside, I recently discovered that the famous labor song “Solidarity Forever” was actually written in Kanawha County by Ralph Chaplin after a visit to the Paint Creek-Cabin Creek Mine Wars in 1912.
Here is a long piece by Ms. Lewis about her amazing film career, working on “Harlan County, USA” and many, many other films - http://www.centerforsocialmedia.org/htmlresources/lewis.htm
Her personal website with the most info about “Morristown” - http://www.annelewis.org/morristown_info.html
To watch a clip of the film - http://rtf.utexas.edu/faculty/lewisa/trailer.html. To purchase a copy of the film on DVD - http://appalshop.org/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=342
