The documentary A Song For You details a story of survival through strength of will, luck, and the help of those who risked their lives to save a family fleeing the Nazi party.

In 1943, with the help of the French Resistance, the Karp family escaped the Nazis by crossing the Pyrenees on foot. For five harrowing years, they were on the run, sometimes only steps ahead of Hitler’s troops. Carrying the burden of their parent’s trauma, the filmmaker and her sisters return to Europe to confront the past. In A Song For You, the story is told through interviews with her ninety-seven year-old mother, segments of a book her father wrote, home movies, photographs, documents, and historical footage. The mother’s songs are threaded throughout A Song For You, because singing brought relief and hope in desperate times.

The screening will be followed by a discussion led by directors Sharon Karp and Silvia Malagrino.

 

This event is free and open to the public.
However, registration is required and can be made online.

About the Film Directors

• Not only has Director Sharon Karp been involved with the production of independent films since 1974, but she is also a founding member of the Chicago-based film collective Kartemquin Films and formed her own video and post-production house, Media Monster. Among the many films on which she has worked, Karp helped produce the award-winning The Chicago Maternity Center Story, which won the Chicago Film Festival Silver Hugo Award, and Silent Pioneers, which was nominated for an Emmy in 1986. More recently, she worked on Be Filled with the Spirit: Storefront Churches, Picture Man: The Poetry of Photographer Milton Rogovin, and Never Turning Back: the World of Peggy Lipschutz, which won the Cine Golden Eagle award in 2009.
• Currently a professor in Photography at The School of Art and Art History of the University of Illinois, Co-Director Silvia Malagrino is an international award-winning artist and filmmaker from Argentina. Malagrino works with different mediums—photography, digital video, language, light, and sound—to not only represent issues of historical and cultural relevance, but also to explore the human imagination. She has received numerous grants and awards, including a 2010 Guggenheim Fellowship, The National Endowment for the Arts Creativity Grant 2004, and more recently, the State of Illinois Distinguished Artist award for her contributions to Art and Society.

This event is presented by theSchool of Art and Art History at the University of Illinois at Chicago as part of The Collaborative City, a program of the Illinois Humanities Council, in partnership with the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE).

          

If you need a sign interpreter or require other arrangements to fully participate, please call 312.422.5580 at least 72 hours prior to the event. For parking locations near the facility, please visit ChicagoParkingMap.com.