Premiere

Cantor Abelson performs Unter Dayne Vayse Schtern
in a studio in New York.


The Songs They Sang
****World Premiere****
Opening Night film at the Bayside Film Festival
7:15PM, 14th July 2010.
Brighton Bayside Cinema
Melbourne, Australia


The Songs They Sang is the untold true story of the amazing musical and artistic performances that took place at the Vilna Ghetto, Lithuania, during WW11. These performances brought hope to the Jewish people in the Ghetto whilst they faced the daily horror of genocide.

The film’s focus is on these remarkable songs and the music composed and performed by Jewish musicians, songwriters and singers primarily held in the Vilna Ghetto during the Holocaust. These songs and the music will be reprised and performed once again by professional musicians, survivors, family members of composers who wrote works during the Holocaust and a Cantor in New York.

In addition to this, Holocaust survivors and family members recall their experiences of Ghetto daily life, a partisan revisits the site of a mass grave in the Ponar forest, and the legacy of a talented lyricist is remembered during Shiva - the seven day period of mourning following his death.

Some of the inspiring figures profiled in the film include Shmerke Kaczerginski, one of the popular songwriters who wrote lyrics and organized musical performances in the Vilna ghetto. Along with Abraham Sutzkever, he risked his life during the war to preserve these writings and the music created to record life within the ghetto. After the war, Kaczerginski made it his life’s work to compile the songs and poetry created by people during the Holocaust.

Sutzkever, a respected poet and scholar, wrote the startling lyric to Unter DayneVayse Shtern (Under the white stars), which reveals the spiritual resistance and position of faith of those inside the ghetto. In later life he wrote poetry in Yiddish and helped to keep a struggling language alive.

The film also includes an extended interview with Alexander Tamir, the last surviving composer of Vilna. His bittersweet composition, "Shtiler Shtiler" (Quiet, Quiet) reveals the perspective of children held in Vilna ghetto.

The documentary also considers the various people preserving such music and memories today: Sutzkever’s granddaughter who travels the world performing her late grandfather's text, an Italian musical arranger catalogues all known music from the Holocaust in a repository in Rome, a Melbourne composer and performer who busily arrange music from the Vilna ghetto to be recorded and performed before a contemporary audience, and a young Jewish community leader who reveals the struggles to retain the culture and language of his forebears in Lithuania today.

The film has been shot across 6 countries and in 5 languages, and is directed by Rohan Spong (the director of the critically acclaimed T is for Teacher).