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With the new documentary “Anita,” the Oscar-winning director Freida Mock (“Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision”) brings a fresh perspective to a somber and awkward chapter of modern American politics: the Senate hearings to confirm Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court amid accusations of sexual harassment by Anita Hill.

In the first half of this marvelously structured film, Ms. Mock deftly segues from the hearings to present-day interviews with people who were in that room in 1991, including Ms. Hill, her lawyer and her friends. This gives a sense of an annotated version of familiar words and images. (Among those interviewed are Jill Abramson, the executive editor of The New York Times, who covered the trial for The Wall Street Journal and wrote, with Jane Mayer, the 1994 book “Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas.”)

Ms. Mock shows the ways the Senate proceedings quickly collapsed amid racial unease after Mr. Thomas declared that his confirmation was imperiled as a result of a “high-tech lynching.” He was referring to himself and not to Ms. Hill.

“People think, when they think of those hearings, ‘He had a race, and she had a gender,’ ” Ms. Hill tells a group at Spelman College in the film. She then laughs uneasily at the absurdity before continuing: “But it was really the combination. And it changed the dynamics.”

“Anita” is an important historical document about an event that prompted a larger cultural conversation about sexual harassment. But, perhaps more important, it conveys Ms. Hill’s journey from an accuser alone to an activist who shares with, and listens to, others. (She is now 57 and a professor at Brandeis University.)

“Sexual harassment is just part of a larger problem of gender inequality,” she says. “And I didn’t realize that until I started hearing from people.”

In the second half of the film, Ms. Mock takes Ms. Hill away from that famous image of her testifying before a panel of white men and places her in a context of power as she speaks in front of rooms full of women (like the Brooklyn-based group Girls for Gender Equity). By showing this evolution, Ms. Mock demonstrates that harassment holds its power mainly in isolation.