Documentary Work
Director/Producer, In Progress
An essay film exploring often-unspoken legacies of segregation and homophobia in my home state of Mississippi through a personal lens. The unmarked home of Tennessee Williams in my hometown sets the stage for me to look anew at community fractures, challenged by and alongside remarkable people working through unfolding events in Mississippi today. Support the film!
Co-Director / Producer / Editor, In Post Production
A collaboration with historian Estelle Freedman, Singing for Justice is a lyrical journey through the spirited life and surprising influence of folk and labor icon 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. Support the film!
Producer, 2024
Part verité essay, part political diary, 23 MILE is an experimental nonfiction film from Director/Producer Mitch McCabe following Americans during cataclysmic events in the swing state of Michigan throughout 2020 – including the plot to kidnap Governor Whitmer – painting a portrait of a populace that defies media stereotypes. A document of complex discourse, the film draws a surprisingly hopeful human portrait against the foreboding backdrop of societal instability.
Co-Producer / Consulting Editor, 2024
One Person, One Vote? is a feature documentary - from Director/Producer Maximina Juson - that takes an unprecedented look at the Electoral College through the eyes of four presidential electors – a Republican, a Democrat, a Green, and a Kanye West elector – whose motivations range from noble to the absurd.
Editor (Episode 2), 2023
PBS/Independent Lens limited series following a quiet Texas town as it grapples with the aftermath of the arson of a mosque just hours after the first travel ban in 2017.The town of Victoria must overcome its age-old political, racial, and economic divides to find a collective way forward. Episode 2 finds the town’s support for the Muslim community waning as rebuilding efforts stall.
Post Production Producer, 2023
When director Jasmin Mara López sees a photo of her niece with her grandfather, she is flooded by painful memories of her own childhood sexual abuse at his hands—and the following 24 years of her silence. In this cinematically striking and poetic documentary, López bravely films her story as a willful act to accept difficult truths while finding beauty in the process of healing.
Post Production Producer, 2021
After the inconclusive death of his young niece, filmmaker Angelo Madsen Minax returns to his rural Michigan hometown to excavate the depths of generational addiction, Christian fervor, and trans embodiment. Lyrically assembled images, decades of home movies, and ethereal narration form an idiosyncratic and poetic undertow that guide a viewer through lifetimes and relationships.
Finishing Editor, 2021
Death Is Our Business examines in intimate and moving detail how Black funeral homes in New Orleans have had to adapt to the devastating impact of COVID-19 in their community. While revealing the racial disparities of the virus’ toll, award-winning filmmaker Jacqueline Olive shines a light on how the coronavirus has rocked the Black community’s cherished cultural practices in a city that is no stranger to loss and grief.
With inequality growing, a climate catastrophe looming, and right-wing extremism ascending around the world, many Americans are wondering whether capitalism is to blame. But what is the alternative? The Big Scary "S" Word delves into the rich history of the American socialist movement and journeys with the people striving to build a socialist future today.
Producer/ Editor, 2018
Bias challenges us to confront our hidden biases and understand what we risk when we follow our gut. The documentary feature follows filmmaker Robin Hauser on a journey to explore how unconscious bias defines relationships, workplaces, our justice system, and technology.
Soaring at 26,000 feet without a drop of fuel, nothing is predictable. Point of No Return takes you behind the headlines of the first solar-powered flight around the world-where two courageous pilots take turns battling nature, their own crew, and sometimes logic itself, to achieve the impossible. Not just to make history, but to inspire a revolution.
Producer / Editor, 2015
CODE exposes the dearth of female and minority software engineers and explores the reasons for this gender gap and digital divide. The film highlights breakthrough efforts that are producing more diverse programmers and shows how this critical gap can be closed. CODE asks: what would society gain from having more women and people of color code, and how do we get there?
Director / Producer / Camera, 2013
The shocking passage of Prop 8 in seemingly LGBT-friendly California galvanized the US queer equality movement, and thousands of activists dropped what they were doing and threw themselves into the largest social issue campaign the US had ever seen. With exclusive footage of this historic political mobilization alongside a 50-year history of marriage equality efforts in the US, The Campaign provides an intimate window into a timeless question: What inspires everyday people to opt in for something bigger than themselves?
Second Editor / Post Production Supervisor, 2008
A mild Christmas day in San Francisco turned into a tragedy, the likes of which has never been seen before. Two young men were mauled, and one 17-year-old boy and one four-year-old Siberian tigress lay dead. The next morning there were more questions than answers. How did this tiger escape? Could it have jumped over the 12.5 foot wall or across the 33 foot moat? In Zoo Tiger Escape,
experts and scientists test escape theories
with shocking results.
Director / Producer / Editor, 2005
Illumines the quiet efforts of Sister Manette, a white Catholic nun running the only health clinic in rural Jonestown, Mississippi. Despite extremely limited resources, she forges ahead by keeping a refreshingly practical approach to
faith, race, and poverty. Through intimate observational scenes of her with her patients, Bodies and Souls profiles Sister Manette's humble labors "to help save bodies, so that the souls can come alive.
Director / Producer / Editor, 2004
Somewhere beyond the Golden Gate Bridge, the cable cars and the coffee bars, San Francisco is teeming with chickens, but are they pets or are they food? Chickens in the City is a chicken-level view of two backyard coops in San Francisco, playfully exploring the ways in which keeping chickens helps shape the philosophies behind what and how urban chicken-owners eat. After all, when is the last time you looked YOUR dinner in the eye?
Director / Producer / Editor, 2003
The term “partner” has long been a convention used to describe committed queer relationships, but what does this word mean? Praised for its parity and criticized for its ambiguity, the word “partner” was liberating for some but frustrating for others. Howdy Partner is a spirited, visual meditation on how one slippery word means more - and consequently less - than we may think.
Select Branded Work
Explores differences between experimental privatization models and public investment in equitable education systems. The video examines three pairs of countries - Chile and Cuba, Sweden and Finland, and Canada and the U.S. - with one country in each pair privatizing and the other using a public investment model in education.
Editor for Kikim Media
The Skoll Foundation presents the Skoll Awards for Social Entrepreneurship each year to a select few social entrepreneurs whose proven innovations have demonstrated impact on some of the world's most pressing problems. The Skoll Award recognizes organizations with the potential to not only be individually successful, but also to catalyze large-scale, system-level change.
Director / Producer for Winton duPont Films,
The UC Berkeley School of Law celebrates its 100-year legacy, as told by faculty, students, and alumni. The video features the law school's renowned clinics, classes, and moot court program. It includes interviews with Dean Christopher Edley and professors David Sklansky, Melissa Murray, Eric Talley and more.
Editor
Hundreds of Facebook employees, family, and friends marched with Gay@Facebook in the 2012 San Francisco Pride Parade. One of several shorts edited for Facebook.
Book artist Pam Deluco shows us how she makes beautiful journals for the Shape What's to Come community using recycled and repurposed Levi's denim.
Director / Producer / Editor for Winton duPont Films
The Power of Students Teaching Students is one of six short films created for educational nonprofit Breakthrough Collaborative. Breakthrough has provided an environment with the goal to cultivate leaders and also to establish challenge as an expectation. Students, teachers, and alumni discuss the role of Breakthrough in their lives.
75 Reasons to Live is a series of 75 short films for SFMoMA’s website and galleries. In January 2010, during their 75th anniversary celebration, 75 people from the Bay Area creative community gave short talks (7.5 minutes or less!) on a single collection work of their choosing. Example: Kota Ezawa on Jeff Koons's "Michael Jackson and Bubbles.”
Producer and Editor
Hope for the Future is a short film that gives an update on the state of stem cell research and highlights some of NYSCF’s programs for the Fifth Annual Gala Dinner Celebration.
Director / Producer / Editor for Winton duPont Films
Series of 3 short films featuring outstanding graduates and faculty. Example: Dale Minami. Citation Award recipient Dale Minami '71 has been a longtime champion of civil rights. Among his many triumphs, Minami headed the legal team that overturned the conviction of Fred Korematsu, whose defiance of the World War II Japanese internment order led to a controversial 1944 U.S. Supreme Court decision, Korematsu v. U.S.
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BIO
Christie Herring (she/her) is an award-winning filmmaker, producer, and editor who has worked in documentary film for over 25 years. Her work broaches complex political and cultural subjects, reaching national and international audiences through outlets including the Tribeca Film Festival, the White House, PBS and major streaming services, and US Embassies around the world. She directed THE CAMPAIGN which followed California’s battle over queer marriage equality and aired on PBS. Recent credits include 23 MILE (producer), THE BIG SCARY "S" WORD (editor/co-producer), ONE PERSON ONE VOTE (co-producer, consulting editor), DEATH IS OUR BUSINESS (finishing editor), BIAS (editor/producer), POINT OF NO RETURN (editor), and CODE: DEBUGGING THE GENDER GAP (editor/producer). Christie is a Member and former Steering Committee Chair of the 50-year-old film distribution coop New Day Films. She is an instructor with the American Film Showcase and was a selected participant in the NBPC New Media Institute, the ITVS Queer X-Change, the CPB/PBS Producer’s Academy at WGBH, and SFFILM’s Film House Residency Program. Christie received her BA from Duke University where she studied with and assisted filmmaker Raúl Ruiz. She received her MA in Documentary Filmmaking from Stanford University.
Christie founded independent film company Campaign Productions with the aim of creating emotionally immersive, policy informed, and empowering nonfiction media that unflinchingly engages with the most pressing concerns in US culture and politics. Inspired by her upbringing in politics in the American Deep South, the company aims to create community-building and democracy-strengthening work at the intersections of racial justice, LGBTQ liberation, and local cultures. In addition to collaboration on independent films, Campaign Productions creates media for educational and nonprofit organizations, artfully telling urgent stories of social change with groups such as Breakthrough Collaborative, the University of California, SFMoMA, Michigan Forward, the Advancement Project, and the Mississippi Center for Justice.