Betty Reid Soskin is an American icon. She lived through so many untold chapters of American history and opened our eyes to the Black experience crossing the color line in California during the Jim Crow era. Some of you have heard her speak about forgotten pages of history at the Rosie the Riveter Museum and some have read her memoir, but now, for the first time, Betty is ready to tell her families full experience in an intimate documentary film and release the album of songs that have been hidden away in the back of her closet for over half a century.  

This fundraising push will allow us to keep our editor on for the life of the film as well as pay for some of the costs of shooting our first creative re-enactments! 

With no clear sense for what the future would hold, she decided to open the box and dive back into her songs. That sparked an autobiographical journey to re-explore the personal experiences behind her songs. 

Betty’s music is a haunting flashback to her family’s experiences confronting Jim Crow segregation in California. As the first African-Americans to integrate in an all-white suburb of San Francisco, her son survived being stoned by white children, and her family endured daily bigotry that left permanent scars. 

The film follows Betty’s journey from the first time she listens to her old tapes, through her collaborations with younger musicians, and culminates with her singing of one of her songs to a crowd of thousands backed by a full symphony orchestra and choir - but only after confronting the deep personal traumas that had kept her from her music for so long.

In collaboration with the next generation of Bay Area Musicians, Betty’s songs converge past & present through their exploration of race, identity, and what it means to be American. 

Bryan is a director, producer and cinematographer in Oakland, CA. He shoots, directs and often edits his own projects, which range from investigations into the criminal justice system to visual experiments capturing movement and dance. His films are deeply personal explorations of the people in front of his lens, and his camera always seeks to bring viewers closer to his subjects. 

Originally from New Mexico, he worked as a bilingual reporter in Albuquerque before earning a master’s degree from the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism documentary film program in 2012, where he was awarded the Mark Felt Fellowship for Investigative Reporting. ‍‍‍While at Berkeley, he directed, shot and edited Chicago Confessional, a 26-minute documentary film about wrongful convictions and an inmate’s fight for a new trial after 30 years in prison. 

His hybrid short documentary, Sickness in the System, which depicts the COVID-19 outbreak in San Quentin Prison using actors, animation and archival footage, was picked up by Field of Vision for distribution and released in 2022. His half-hour dance film, Love, A State of Grace, will premiere at the San Francisco Dance Film Festival in October 2023. He was awarded a National Media-Maker Fellowship by the Bay Area Video Coalition in 2018. He speaks English, Spanish and Portuguese. 

A.K. is a filmmaker who directs, produces, and now writes films about female protagonists, the immigrant experience, and new perspectives on history. Probing themes such as race, class, spirituality, and cross-cultural solidarity, she tells stories to bridge the gap between our perceived differences and cultivate a deeper understanding of human connections.

Her debut award-winning film, ALIVE IN BRONZE: Huey P. Newton (1942–1989) screened at festivals like Tribeca, PanAfrican, Mill Valley and beyond before being acquired by MTV Documentaries/Paramount+.

A.K. has been awarded the Emerging Artist Award in the State of California and was the winner of SeriesFest ‘Spotlight Your Town’ Pitch competition by NatGeo and Visible. She was selected as part of the inaugural cohorts for DOC NYC/VC’s Storytelling Incubator and for Re-Take Oakland film fellowship for emerging BIPOC filmmakers.

She is currently in development for a mix of documentary and narrative projects and a docu-series that reveals the neglected stories of women and children of the Black Panther Party and their ongoing work to redefine our cultural narrative through the arts. A.K. has earned degrees from Columbia University and U.C. Berkeley, and is an active member of A-Doc, Brown Girls Doc Mafia, CineFemme, D-Word and Collective of Documentary Women Cinematographers. She speaks English, Punjabi, and Hindi/Urdu

Kevin Jones, Senior Editor

Kevin is an Emmy-award-winning editor whose cut over a dozen feature-length documentaries. His credits include Dave Chappelle Live in Real Life, which had its premiere as the closing night film of the 2021 Tribeca Film Festival. He also edited the Emmy-winning documentary A Lion in the House, which premiered at Sundance before airing nationally on PBS. His credits also include Burn, the audience award winner at the Tribeca Film Festival and New York Times Critic's Pick.