Tonya Lewis-Lee: Last News

Addie Morfoot ContributorThis year at the Sundance Film Festival, three feature documentaries — Paula Eiselt and Tonya Lewis Lee’s “Aftershock,” Reid Davenport’s “I Didn’t See You There” and Isabel Castro’s “Mija” — share in common a $10,000 grant provided by the Points North Institute and CNN Films’ American Stories Documentary Fund.Launched in 2020, the fund underwritten by CNN has dispensed a total of $100,000 in grants to emerging U.S. filmmakers working on 10 documentary projects that highlight pivotal moments in America. Eiselt and Lewis Lee’s “Aftershock,” and Davenport’s “I Didn’t See You There” are two of nine films in the Sundance U.S.

Addie Morfoot ContributorBlack women, along with Native Americans and Alaska natives, are three times more likely to die before, during or after having a baby, and more than half of these deaths are preventable, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Paula Eiselt and Tonya Lewis Lee take a deep dive into that statistic in their Sundance documentary “Aftershock.”The film tells the story of two young black women who died due to childbirth complications that could have been prevented. Through interviews with bereaved fathers and mothers, birth-workers and physicians, Eiselt and Lewis Lee examine the maternal health crisis happening throughout the country.