Join us online on Thursday, February 29th at 7pm PST for an engaging discussion with the Zaccho Dance Theatre and the film team of Sign My Name to Freedom.
This FREE event will include a 20-minute preview of Sign My Name to Freedom and Q & A with choreographer Joanna Haigood and film director Bryan Gibel. They will chat about their respective relationships with Betty Reid Soskin and the role the arts play in communicating the Black experience in both the past and present.
The film (in progress) sheds new light on the multifaceted and inconic former national park ranger Betty Reid Soskin. It will be a documentary hybrid, drawing on Betty's extensive photo, film & audio archive, footage shot with her over many years, and dramatic recreations with actors to depict pivotal moments in her life that were never documented. It centers on a secret Betty had kept for more than 50 years: her life as a singer-songwriter during the 1960s–70s, when she wrote autobiographical songs to process her experiences as the first Black family to move across the color line into Walnut Creek when it was racially segregated.
In addition to exploring lesser known aspects of Betty’s life, the project will also release an album of Betty’s unreleased songs to the world for the first time, and it takes viewers along with Betty on her journey to explore her lost music in her 90s by partnering with musicians from around the Bay Area.
If you cannot attend, but want more information on how to support this project, please visit www.seedandspark.com/fund/sign-my-name-to-freedom and consider donating to our project there! Betty is currently 102 and her dream is to watch the completed film. Help make that dream a reality by donating to the project today!