Documentary Filmmaker Freida Mock’s latest film, Anita, Speaking Truth to Power, tells the story of Anita Hill, who testified during the confirmation hearings of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas in 1991.
She accused her former employer, Thomas, of sexual harassment that that allegedly occurred a decade prior. Once the nationally televised congressional hearings in the early 1990s got underway, the case quickly became very public.
"There’s a lot of misunderstanding by the public of what she was doing in 1991," says Mock. "Why was she testifying? Why didn’t she speak up about something that had happened ten years before? Because what she described of her experience as an employee of Clarence Thomas as her supervisor, her boss, happened in the 1980s.”
Mock, and Academy Award Winner and UC Berkeley alumna, hopes that the film is seen by the younger generation who are the beneficiaries of what Anita did back then.
“There is a huge problem of sexual assault, and they will know that they have recourse, because of the spotlight that Anita Hill started,” says Mock.
Click the player above to listen to the full interview.
The documentary Anita: Speaking Truth to Power is now playing at the Embarcadero Center Cinema in San Francisco and Shattuck Cinemas in Berkeley.
