Sign My Name to Freedom

Betty Reid Soskin is America’s oldest park ranger, famous for tirelessly shedding light on the forgotten history of racial segregation in California. But there’s a hidden side to Betty she rarely talks about. Back in the 1960s, Betty was a singer/songwriter with a voice like Billie Holiday and the relevance of Nina Simone, but she turned her back on a potential career in music, and her songs haven’t been heard for 40 years.

Now she teams up with musicians from different generations from San Francisco and Oakland to perform new arrangements of her songs, sparking an autobiographical journey through the black experience. Sign My Name to Freedom is a feature documentary about Betty, her lost music and her family’s experiences confronting racial segregation in California's Bay Area. Along with the film, we will release an album of Betty’s music to introduce the world to her stunning original songs for the first time.

Project Status: We completed principal photography for the film in early 2020. We are currently fundraising to complete post-production  and to shoot dramatic recreations for key parts of Betty’s story that were never documented through archival material, with a goal of finishing the film by the end of 2024.

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Directed by Bryan Gibel and A.K. Sandhu