Screening and discussion of The Untold Story of Betty Reid Soskin in South Lake Tahoe

SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. - Join South Lake Tahoe filmmaker Sara Lafleur-Vetter in the Barn Room at South of North Brewing for a free exclusive sneak peek of “Sign My Name to Freedom” on Wednesday, February 28 from 5 p.m. to 6:30 p.m.

This is a feature documentary about iconic National Park Ranger Betty Reid Soskin, her hidden life as a singer-songwriter, and her family’s experiences confronting Jim Crow-style segregation on the West Coast.

Betty gained fame as the oldest park ranger in the country after starting that job at the age of 85, and she continued working at the Rosie the Riveter National Historic Site as an interpretive oral historian until she retired at 100. Through her experience as a WWII file clerk for an all-black union auxiliary in Richmond, she helped to reshape the national narrative about home front segregation in the workplace, labor unions, and the armed forces.

The documentary takes Betty’s work for the Park Service as its jumping-off point, and then it explores lesser-known aspects of her personal story, focusing in large part on her family’s role as the first African Americans to cross the color line into Walnut Creek, and her hidden life as a singer/songwriter in the years that followed. The film also looks at Betty’s journey in her 90s to reexplore the music she left behind fifty years earlier and her collaborations with younger musicians to give her songs life again.

Following the 20-minute preview of the documentary, join producer Sara Lafleur-Vetter for a conversation via Zoom with director and producer Bryan Gibel about the making of the film, as well as Betty's daughter Di'ara Reid and granddaughter Alyana Reid who can tell us the behind-the-scenes story of Betty Reid Soskin, an icon on the West Coast and beyond.

The film team is currently raising funds through a crowdfunding campaign to complete the documentary while Betty is still with us to experience it, which she very much hopes can happen. Their goal is to finish the project by the end of this year. Although Betty is doing well at 102, the clock is ticking given her advanced age. The campaign will run through mid-March, but if the team doesn’t hit their fundraising goal by then, none of the donation pledges they have secured will be processed.

To get tickets for the free event, visit https://www.eventbrite.com/e/screening-discussion-the-untold-story-of-betty-reid-soskin-tickets-8379....

Support the making of the documentary: https://seedandspark.com/fund/sign-my-name-to-freedom#story

Documentary Trailer: https://vimeo.com/860742534/3cca74b6f9

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