SINGING FOR JUSTICE features the life of Faith Petric - a joyous performer who united folk music and activism across nearly a century, singing to change the world – and herself.
SINGING FOR JUSTICE reveals the story of Faith Petric (1915-2013), a San Francisco-based political radical, musical organizer, and joyous performer who united folk music and activism through almost a century of American social movements. Over her long and purposeful life, Petric combined group singing and progressive politics, inspiring all to take responsibility for social change, women and elders to defy stereotypes, and everyone she met to sing along.
SINGING FOR JUSTICE provides a compelling portrait of this American original–a worker, social critic, single mother, perennial protestor, and traveling grandmother who reached across generations to encourage musical and political engagement.
Told largely by Faith herself, the film draws upon a treasure trove of sources – her extensive life-long collection of photos and artifacts, performance and interview footage across the decades, and insights from historians, musical colleagues, and family members. Historical footage provides context for a life in which Faith Petric was not abstractly affected by world events but chose to make her mark upon them – from her log-cabin origins to political radicalization during the Great Depression; from her work as a Rosie the Riveter and participant in the first Greenwich Village folk revival in the 1940s to her post-war life as a single working mother in San Francisco; and from marching in Selma in 1965 to reinventing herself as a post-retirement troubadour.
Faith Petric’s story shows how committed networks of people sustain resistance to inequality and conformity in America – through speaking up and singing out. In telling Petric’s story, SINGING FOR JUSTICE probes the personal motivations and the historical circumstances that generated her exceptional dedication to creativity and community building. The film asks what legacies her life offers for those seeking social justice in our own times. Along with providing a social history of modern America through musical history, we hope that SINGING FOR JUSTICE will empower audiences young and old to create music and multi-generational communities, aspiring to the kind of civic engagement that Faith Petric modeled over her lifetime.
Christie (she/her) is an award-winning director, editor, and producer who has worked in documentary filmmaking for over 20 years and has a strong interest in social justice. She recently produced and edited bias,a film that explores how our unconscious assumptions influence our choices. She edited and produced Code: Debugging the Gender Gap, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival, and edited (with Jean Kawahara) The Point of No Return for NOVA. She directed and produced the ITVS-funded film The Campaign which aired on public television and screened at numerous film festivals and universities. Her credits include work with PBS, National Geographic, A&E, MBC1, the History Channel, and many nonprofit and corporate clients including Facebook, SFMoMA, Levis, the Mississippi Center for Justice, and the UC Berkeley School of Law. Christie has taught workshops and been a guest lecturer on film at universities around the world, including Stanford University, the Duke University Center for Documentary Studies, and in Ethiopia as an expert with the American Film Showcase. She has been a selected participant in the NBPC New Media Institute, the ITVS Queer X-Change, and the CPB/PBS Producer’s Academy at WGBH. Christie was a Resident in the San Francisco Film Society Film House and is the Steering Committee Chair of New Day Films, an educational documentary distribution coop. She received her MA in Documentary Filmmaking from Stanford University.
