Vlock Fellow Yulia Ruditskaya premiers The Waltz, a film based on Fortunoff testimonies at the Toronto Jewish Film Festival

By Christy Bailey-Tomecek - May 27, 2022

We are delighted to announce that one of the films in our Vlock Film Series, The Waltz, will be screened at the Toronto Jewish Film Festival in June. More information on the screening is available here:

https://tjff.com/films/the-waltz/

The Waltz is based on the poem by A. Lutzky, pen name of the Yiddish poet Aaron Zucker (1894-1957), set to music by D. Zisl Slepovitch and performed by the Zisl Slepovitch Ensemble and Sasha Lurje as part of the Fortunoff Archive's Songs from Testimonies project.

Lutzky was born in Ukraine and immigrated to New York in the 1910s. In the poem, Lutzky raises themes of lost youth, lost hopes, lost lives, nostalgia for his homeland, and the fragility of life. Employing metaphorical language, the poet expresses themes of death and sorrow. The poem was sung in the Lodz Ghetto and was recounted in the testimony of Jean B. (HVT-701), a survivor who was born in Lodz in 1919.

To hear the song and an excerpt from Jean's testimony visit:
https://fortunoff.library.yale.edu/song/a-valts/

The third volume in our Songs from Testimonies project is currently in production.