Crowd-funding to show "Big Sonia" in commercial theatres
On a non-profit basis, I’ve helped fund a film for the first time. The film earned many prizes in film festivals and we are now raising money to show it in commercial theatres next fall. Each $11,000 beyond our goal permits us to add another city.
Every bit helps, so I’d appreciate it if you forward information to your contacts who might be interested (fairly promptly as our campaign ends at the end of June and they may want to forward it also).
Thanks for taking time to consider a donation and to pass this message on!
If you’d like to review my comments regarding the film and find a link to their earlier film which opened my eyes to the tremendous potential of cinema for peace, please scroll down past the funding info. --- Claude Thau
Help BIG SONIA get to the BIG SCREEN -
#SmallMattersBig Campaign Launch TODAY!
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#SmallMattersBig Campaign
The crowd-funding site WOMEN YOU SHOULD FUND is helping us fund bringing BIG SONIA to the BIG SCREEN this Fall! Film festival audiences say BIG SONIA is an "antidote" to the growing divide, anger and despair in our country. They love the hope and inspiration our film provides. Within our lifetime, all holocaust survivors will be gone; then how will their messages be passed on? Sonia is small (4’8”) but has a big impact on people. Our funding campaign is called “Small Matters Big” because every contribution (small or big or forwarding this message) MATTERS - helping BIG SONIA get to the BIG SCREEN, where we can make the BIGGEST IMPACT possible! Please help us amplify the "Sonia Effect"!
Please watch our PITCH VIDEO for the #SmallMattersBig campaign.
Check our all the details and contribute HERE!
CAMPAIGN LINK: fund.bigsonia.com
We have tons of rewards and incentives by local artists around the US including Gloria Baker Feinstein (Gloasters), Notes To Self Socks, Rachel Ignotofsky, and Morrie Warshawski.
See all rewards HERE and a few samples below.
DONATE to #SmallMattersBig Campaign
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Sonia Warshawski is a holocaust survivor who has lived in the USA since 1947. Around 1960, Sonia’s husband developed Parkinson’s, requiring her to take a bigger role in their tailor shop, as well as care for him. He ultimately suffered from Alzheimer’s. Since his death in 1989, Sonia continues to run their tailor shop and has provided a job for a succession of immigrants from a diverse array of countries. The mall closed, causing her eviction in 2014. She re-opened at a new location and continues to work six days each week at age 91!
One unusual characteristic is that Sonia talks about the holocaust in schools, prisons and other venues. By doing so, has had a huge positive impact on students and prisoners.
- As a result of meeting Sonia, Caroline Kennedy dedicated her life to non-profit activity, founding www.empowereducateinspire.org/, a young-adult-run organization to encourage young adults to have an impact on the world. In March 2016, Caroline was granted a full 4-year scholarship to the very prestigious Morehead-Cain Scholars Program at the University of North Carolina.
- A prisoner says “Talking to Sonia can save your life. It takes someone who’s been through something to understand someone who’s going through something.” Prisoners understand that if Sonia was able to overcome what she experienced, they, too, can overcome their situation.
In 2016, Leah Warshawski (Sonia’s grand-daughter) and Leah’s husband (Todd Soliday) completed a 93-minute film memorializing key aspects of Sonia’s life and philosophy. In a 2014 Kansas City Star article, Eric Adler described the “Big Sonia” project as a story “of modern-day survival — how a tiny woman, time and again, after facing her own death and then that of her husband, is nonetheless able to reinvent herself and find hope and meaning in life.” Melinda Henneberger wrote a ”Big Sonia” article in 2017. I am one of many who has had the good fortune to contribute to making this film. The next step is to fund distribution and development of educational materials for schools and prisons. If you’d like to help, see the end of this message. Regardless, I strongly encourage you to see the movie.
Adler’s article gives a glimpse of Sonia’s experience:
“Here is a woman who at 15 survived the ghetto of Miedzyrzec before being ripped from her family and herded into a cattle car to stand atop heaps of bodies. Starved close to death inside the Majdanek concentration camp, she watched as her own mother marched off, arm in arm with other mothers, to the gas chambers. “I shall never forget in my life, this was the last time I saw her,” Warshawski said, her voice catching.
She witnessed children hanged and prisoners torn to pieces by German shepherds. In the fields, Warshawski spread the ashes of the dead. “As fertilizer,” she said.
Later, at Auschwitz-Birkenau, Warshawski found herself face to face with Josef Mengele, the Nazi doctor who experimented on children and prisoners, but survived his “selections” to the gas chambers and was sent on a winter death march to Bergen-Belsen. On a day in April 1945, as English troops swept in to liberate the camp, a German soldier shot Warshawski in the chest.”
I first met Sonia after reading about her shortly after moving to Kansas City. When our son was home from college, I brought him to Sonia’s shop under the pretext that his sports coat needed altering. Normally my wife would handle such needs with her tailor. My real purpose was for Sonia to see a third-generation descendant of holocaust victims. It is so important for genocide survivors to see succeeding generations.
Having lost all my grandparents during the holocaust before I was born, I experience cognitive dissonance as each generation of my descendants identifies less-and-less with the holocaust. I feel a loss in that regard although it is wonderful that the holocaust has not recurred for them. But genocides continue (consider ISIS, Serbia, Rwanda) and I think we don’t respond strongly enough. Genocide goes beyond war and even beyond terrorism. Leah and Todd effectively deliver a very important message about persistence and resilience and wrap it subtly with other issues such as aging of people and malls, caregiving, prisons, and immigration.
You can see a 3-minute trailer and learn more at https://bigsonia.com/.
Here’s a link to one of their earlier films (Finding Hillywood). It’s a great story about building an independent film industry in Rwanda, which helps Hutus and Tutsis understand their recent history through each other’s eyes.
Please feel free to contact me with any questions or comments or to contact Leah directly at [email protected].