URBAN-15’s Hidden Histories, is a new monthly, magazine-format video series that pursues and preserves the stories, lives, and places that make San Antonio an inspiring cultural treasure.
In honor of Labor Day, September’s episode of Hidden Histories explores worker experience in San Antonio and throughout Texas—from the everyday to the extraordinary. The heart of this episode is a discussion with independent filmmaker Anne Lewis, director of A Strike and an Uprising (in Texas), an experimental documentary that tells the story of the San Antonio pecan sheller strike led by Emma Tenayuca and the Jobs with Justice March led by Nacogdoches cafeteria workers, groundskeepers, and housekeepers in 1987. Following discussion with Lewis on the making of this film, brief excerpts will be shown, in anticipation of the full screening on Friday, September 7th at 8pm.
Finally, in an homage to Studs Terkel’s Working, September’s episode also presents a collage of short film interviews with a range of San Antonio residents on one question: What was your first job?
With the support of the San Antonio Film Commission and the San Antonio Area Foundation, URBAN-15 has developed this project to ensure that the histories memorialized by the Tricentennial celebration and by World Heritage efforts truly reflect the diversity of this region, which has been inhabited for over 10,000 years—well before 300 years of European settlement. Community-produced media is one way we can broaden public participation in official histories.
