The Lonely Child
San Francisco Jewish Film Festival
Wednesday July 29, 12 pm, Piedmont Theatre, Oakland
Also showing: Saturday July 18, 11 am, Castro Theatre, San Francisco
Use discount code KLEZSFJFF46 for $2 off each ticket.
Nearly eighty years after Yiddish composer Shmerke Kaczerginski wrote a lullaby in the Vilna Ghetto, director Marc Smolowitz follows Bay Area journalist Alix Wall, the daughter of the girl immortalized in the mournful song “Dos Elnte Kind.” What begins as a personal investigation expands outward as she invites musicians across generations and geographies to reinterpret the lullaby for the present.
The song emerged under extraordinary circumstances, when a select group of Jewish intellectuals was forced to catalog cultural artifacts destined for the Nazis’ planned “Museum of an Extinct Race.” In response, the Paper Brigade arose, secretly smuggling and safeguarding materials for future generations. Among its members were Kaczerginski and Wall’s grandmother, Rachela Pupko-Krinski, whose daughter was being raised in Poland by a non-Jewish nanny. Inspired by her story, Kaczerginski wrote the poem as a tribute to children forced into hiding during the war. Through candid conversation and stirring performances, The Lonely Child reflects on artistic expression as resistance and how a song carries history forward as living memory. —Lori Donnelly