Help The Lonely Child film at Carnegie Hall!

My name is Alix Wall. Seven years ago, I had the idea to make a feature documentary film about a lullaby written in the Vilna Ghetto called The Lonely Child, (Dos Elnte Kind in Yiddish). I wanted to explore how this song had taken on a life of its own. Its last line says: “You must tell your children what happened to us, how we suffered under the enemy. Forget not the past, not for one single day!”

Given that the song was written for and about my mother and grandmother, both of whom have been gone for 20 years now, it’s a line that has haunted me for much of my adult life. It’s as if that imperative has been transferred onto me, and as the only child of my parents and grandparents, I’m now the song’s sole heir. Given that I am not having children, I felt the need to perpetuate the song; to ensure it lives on. Because soon, we will be without our last living Holocaust survivors. A song can outlive all of us. It can be passed down; that is, if people know it. I felt a film was the right vehicle, so we could hear musicians performing it.

I took the project to a college friend and Bay Area filmmaker, Marc Smolowitz, who came on board as producer/director in 2016. Our first official shoot for the film took place in Tel Aviv that year.

When you start down the path of making a documentary, you don’t know what will unfold along the way. That’s especially true for something extraordinary that has just happened, that we couldn’t have anticipated, and perhaps is a “beshert” (meant to be) reason it has taken as long as it has: a Chicago-based composer, Ira Antelis, is putting on a concert of songs from the Holocaust called We Are Here with Broadway icons like Harvey Fierstein and Chita Rivera, cantors and pop personalities in late January in New York City’s famed Carnegie Hall. The Lonely Child will be sung in English by Wendy Moten, a Nashville-based jazz singer, who was a runner-up on The Voice. They are flying me in to introduce my mother’s song; I will be the only person participating with a personal connection; it’s an incredible honor.

We can envision this being the last scene in our film. But Carnegie Hall operates under union rules and charges $35,000 for permission to film, an astronomical fee for a bootstrapped, independent, production like ours. Yet we can’t imagine this taking place and it not appearing in the final film. We have until January 12 – my birthday – to raise the funds. We are deeply hopeful that those who have been following our journey thus far will step in and help us try.

If you prefer to donate to get a tax-deduction, please donate at our fiscal sponsor's page.

If we do not raise the funds, your donation will help us with the few remaining scenes we need to complete the film. With or without the Carnegie concert, we have made significant progress and just need to do a few more shoots. Thank you so much! It takes a village to make an independent film.