This attitude, Weisman told the Herald, was one of the main things that drove her to make the film. “Whenever I feel discouraged, angry or hopeless, I find that talking with Anna Jacobs snaps me out of it,” she said. “It’s not just because nothing I experience remotely compares with what she’s gone through, it’s the lilt of her voice and the unconditional love she offers me.”

Weisman, 55, who grew up in an Army family that moved to Baldwin from Virginia when she was 9 months old, said that sharing Anna’s voice and wisdom with the world was one of the main reasons she made the film. She met both Roz and Anna when she was studying environmental conservation at Barnard after graduating from BHS, and began compiling footage as far back as the 1980s.

“They were the first survivors I met,” says Weisman, who has since discovered through BHS’s alumni newsletter, Nexus, that several of her Baldwin schoolmates also had family members who survived the Holocaust. “We didn’t know what we would do with the stories, but we knew we had to capture them.”

Weisman archived her footage while she worked for the Children’s Television Workshop (now Sesame Workshop), until Roz Jacobs began her paintings of Kalman in 2006. Roz, who had previously shied away from artwork dealing with the Holocaust, wanted to create a multi-media presentation called the Memory Project, which would not only complement her paintings, but also delve into her creative process as well as the history behind the work. Weisman offered her video production and editing skills to help Roz realize her vision, and the process that would lead to “Finding Kalman” began.