Aunjanue Ellis received an Oscar nomination for her role in King Richard, the critically acclaimed biopic about Venus and Serena Williams’ father, Richard Williams.
Now Ellis is generating buzz for her performance as civil rights pioneer Fannie Lou Hamer in the short film Fannie.
Ellis is the sole performer in the live-action short, and just won the Best Actress Award at the 13th Annual BronzeLens Film Festival in Atlanta.
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Fannie examines Hamer’s journey from growing up in poverty in a family of Mississippi sharecroppers, to becoming a Civil Rights pioneer by fighting for Black people to obtain the right to vote.
In June 1963, Hamer and several other women were arrested after attending a voter registration workshop. According to historical accounts, the women were pulled off a bus, taken into custody and beaten, leaving some of them with permanent injuries.
In character as Hamer in Fannie, Ellis describes being brutalized while in police custody.
“They took me to county jail, where they placed me in a cell. I began to hear the sounds of licks and screams,” she says in heartbreaking detail. She then describes being transferred to a cell with “two Negro prisoners” who were ordered by a state highway patrolman to attack her. “I was beat by the first Negro prisoner until he was exhausted,” she says. “I began to scream and then a white man came over and beat me in the head and told me to hush.”
Related Story: Marian Anderson and Fannie Lou Hamer Celebrated in Documentaries on PBS
Fannie is directed by Christine Swanson and produced by Swanson and Ellis. Executive producers include Angela Harmon, Abeni Bloodworth, Emil Pinnock, and Stephanie Frederic.
The film will run theatrically as part of the Laemmle Monica Film Center “Shorts By the Sea” film series in Santa Monica from Sept. 23-29. The short will additionally screen at the Morehouse College Human Rights Festival in Atlanta on Sept. 24.
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