Soundtrack for a Revolution

The documentary is about the American civil rights movement. Songs are at the centre of the account. They are known as freedom songs. They were sung on picket lines. They were sung at mass meetings. They were sung in jail cells. Their roots come from several places. Slave chants are one. The labour movement is another. The black church counted for most of all. The songs made it possible to say what could not be said, and they steadied people who met force without answering it in kind. New performances of them run through the film, alongside archive footage and interviews with people who were in the movement. Bill Guttentag and Dan Sturman made the eighty two minute documentary, a French, British and American production finished in 2009.