Annual Lewinson Film Screening
2025-2026 Lewinson Film Screening Theme: Immigration
The Lewinson Center for the Study of Labor, Inequality, and Social Justice will be hosting a film screening of Calico Rebellion. Directors and Producers Victoria Kupchinetsky and Misha Gutkin will be joining for a Q &A following the film.
When: Tuesday, March 24, 2026 at 3:30 p.m.
Where: To be confirmed.
In the lush woods of New York's Catskill Mountains, a mythical memory lives on. Of a time when men - armed with rifles and pitchforks, disguised in eerie leather masks and calico gowns - descended from the hills to stage the “Second American Revolution”.
Two hundred years ago immigrant farmers in the Catskills, fed up with oppression and exploitation by absentee landlords, staged a rebellion known as the Anti-Rent War. The uprising changed the course of history, paving the way to land rights across America and to the formation of a new political group — Abraham Lincoln’s Republican Party.
Today, although largely forgotten, the historic uprising lives on through direct descendants of those rebellious farmers. Calico Rebellion explores a pivotal moment in American history, and a community’s unique and enduring connection to the past through the songs, stories and costumes preserved from the 1840s.
Part historical “true crime” story - part meditation on land and belonging in America - Calico Rebelllion is a deep dive into small town America, its identity, idealism and the violence that percolates beneath the surface.