Aviva Kempner
Aviva Kempner (born December 23, 1946 in Berlin ) is an American screenwriter , director and producer of documentaries about Jewish personalities of the 20th century .
Life
Aviva Kempner is the daughter of an American father from Lithuania and a Polish mother who survived the Holocaust . Her father, Harold C. Kempner, was involved in the liberation of Berlin as a Jewish GI in the US Army . She spent the first years of life in Berlin. In 1950 the family moved to Detroit , where Aviva Kempner grew up. Today she lives in Washington, DC She completed her studies at the University of Michigan in 1971 with a Master of Arts .
She has been making independent films since 1979 . The desire to understand her parents influenced her filmmaking career. She became known with her 1986 documentary Partisans of Vilna , for which she also wrote the screenplay. In dozens of interviews with contemporary witnesses, he reconstructs the resistance against the Nazis organized by a group of young Jewish women and men, including Abba Kovner , in the Vilnius ghetto . Her subsequent films are biographies of American Jews of the 20th century, which she calls "under-known Jewish heroes", such as Hank Greenberg , Gertude Berg , and Julius Rosenwald , and with which she breaks up stereotypical images of Jews. Her films have received numerous awards.
In 1990 she founded the Washington Jewish Film Festival (WJFF), the largest and oldest Jewish film festival in the United States. In 1996 she received a Guggenheim Fellowship . In 2001 she received the Women of Vision award , presented by Women in Film and Television International , and the Media Arts award from the National Foundation for Jewish Culture . Since the 1990s she has been writing film reviews a. a. for The Boston Globe , The Jewish Week, and The Washington Post .
Filmography
- Partisans of Vilna (1986)
- The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg (1999). The film was released in 2000 c. a. honored with the Chicago Film Critics Association Award and the National Society of Film Critics Award for best documentary.
- Today I Vote for My Joey (2002)
- Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg (2009). Aviva Kempner received numerous awards for the film.
- Rosenwald (2015)
Web links
- Aviva Kempner in the Internet Movie Database (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Aviva Kempner: An American GI sees liberated Berlin with Jewish eyes . In: Andreas Nachama , Julius H. Schoeps (Ed.): Structure after the downfall. German-Jewish history after 1945 , Argon Verlag, Berlin 1992, ISBN 978-3-87024-714-0 , p. 239ff.
- ↑ Janet Maslin: Film: Partisans of Vilna , reviewed in The New York Times, September 12, 1986.
- ^ Jewish Women's Archive. Aviva Kempner . (Accessed April 8, 2017)
- ^ Aviva Kempner , The National Center for Jewish Film
- ^ The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg , Awards, The National Center for Jewish Film
- ^ Awards Honoring Filmmaker Aviva Kempner , The National Center for Jewish Film
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Kempner, Aviva |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American documentary filmmaker |
| DATE OF BIRTH | December 23, 1946 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Berlin |