NYWIFT Women Who Dared Documentary Series, Week 5: “Truth to Power: Barbara Lee Speaks for Me”
Join us for Week 5 of the NYWIFT Women Who Dared Documentary Series in partnership with International Documentary Association (IDA) and with support from the National Endowment for the Arts.
A six-week screening series of captivating documentaries by women filmmakers starting on Friday, October 23, 2020 and every Friday to follow.
Week 5: Truth to Power: Barbara Lee Speaks for Me
Watch the film: starting Friday, November 20th throughout the weekend
Then join us on Monday, November 23rd at 4 PM EST for a conversation with Director Abby Ginzberg.
Moderated by Cynthia Kane.
Free to watch and attend.
Synopsis
Truth to Power: Barbara Lee Speaks for Me tells the complex story of Representative Barbara Lee, a steadfast voice for human rights, peace and equality in the U.S. Congress for over two decades, who raised two sons as a single mother on food stamps and was the lone vote in opposition to the broad authorization of military force following the September 11th attacks. An all-star cast including Senator Cory Booker, Rep. John Lewis, Rep. Ayanna Pressley, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, commentator Van Jones, actor Danny Glover, and author Alice Walker all share insights about what makes Barbara Lee unique as a public servant and as a truth-telling African American woman.
Panelists
A Peabody award-winning director, Abby Ginzberg has been producing compelling documentaries about race and social justice for over 30 years. Her most recent film, Truth to Power: Barbara Lee Speaks for Me, is a documentary about Rep. Barbara Lee, who is best known for her lone NO vote against the use of military force following the 9/11 attacks and has spent the last 22 years in Congress fighting for peace, racial justice and equality. Waging Change, a documentary about the challenges faced by tipped servers, forced to rely on their tips and the federal tipped minimum wage of $2.13 per hour premiered at DOC NYC in November, 2019 and has screened at film festivals and on-line festivals since then. And Then They Came for Us (2017), about the connection between the incarceration of Japanese Americans during WW II and the current Muslim travel ban won a Silver Gavel Award and has played in major cities across the country. It was broadcast on public television in May, 2019 and 2020. Soft Vengeance: Albie Sachs and the New South Africa won a 2015 Peabody award and has screened at film festivals around the world, winning four audience awards. It was broadcast on public television in July, 2016. Agents of Change (2016) (co-directed with Frank Dawson), tells the untold story of the Black student protest movement of the late 1960’s which led to the creation of Black and Ethnic Studies programs across the country. Abby was the Consulting Producer on The Barber of Birmingham, which premiered at Sundance in 2011 and was nominated for an Oscar® in the Short Doc category, and was directed by Robin Fryday and Gail Dolgin.
Cynthia Kane (moderator) co-created Sundance Channel’s DOCday bringing Jean-Xavier de Lestrade and Denis Poncet’s The Staircase (2006 Peabody, Alfred I. DuPont-Columbia Awards) to US television. At ITVS, she shepherded over 150 international and U.S. co-productions for public media. At Al Jazeera America, she commissioned documentaries and series including Albert Maysles’ final work, In Transit. She exec-produced New Eyes by Hiwot Admasu Getaneh (Venice, TIFF, Rotterdam), worked on Zeva Oelbaum and Sabine Krayenbül’s Letters from Baghdad about the extraordinary life and times of Gertrude Bell, co-produced Kim A Snyder and Maria Cuomo Cole’s Lessons From a School Shooting: Notes from Dunblane, a Netflix Original Documentary, Recent documentaries include The Dilemma of Desire, The Letter and Us Kids. She works with Barbara Kopple and Cabin Creek Films