Helga Keller

Helga Keller (born May 6, 1921 in Darmstadt ; † March 1, 2013 in Tel Aviv ) was a German- Israeli film editor who initially worked under the name Helga Cranston , and later in life as a media scientist . She was married to from the United States coming jazz - saxophonist Mel Keller and had a daughter.

Life

Helga Keller was born as the daughter of the organist of the Liberal Synagogue in Darmstadt, Siegfried May , owner of a shop for fine fabrics and theater materials, and the painter Anna May, b. Haas. The family had close ties to the Darmstadt theater . From 1927 to 1931 Helga attended the Hermannschule, a primary school in Darmstadt. Helga Keller attended grammar school until the isolation of the Jewish students in spring 1936 at the Viktoriaschule (Darmstadt) . She described the experiences of the early Nazi era in her autobiographical book published in 1996. With the help of friends, the family of four and their sister Gerda managed to emigrate to the United Kingdom in 1939 .

There Helga Keller was trained as a film editor. The second film she edited was Laurence Oliviers Hamlet in 1948 , which won four Academy Awards (out of a total of seven nominations). With Richard III. (1955) she worked again with Olivier, the film won the Silver Bear in Berlin and the Golden Globe for best foreign film. In addition, Olivier was nominated for an Oscar for best actor. She then worked with Otto Preminger on Die heilige Johanna (1957) and Bonjour Tristesse (1958).

In 1958 she moved to Israel with the aim of building up the film industry there. During the first years she made a number of short documentary films and worked continuously as an editor. These included There were 10 (1961), directed by Baruch Diener , Joseph the dreamer (1962), directed by Alina Gross and Yoram Gross and The Simhon Family (1964) directed by Joel Zilberg

In the 1970s, Keller began to retire from the active film business and taught as a media scientist at Tel Aviv University . She then moved to the Ministry of Education and built up the film studies branch there. In 1975 she published the book Screen World on Ivrit , which contained articles about and interviews with the great directors, including Ingmar Bergman , François Truffaut , Federico Fellini , Luis Bunuel and Michelangelo Antonioni . In 1992 she resigned from the Ministry of Education, having previously developed the media studies curricula for Israeli schools.

Although Keller stated that he never wanted to visit Germany again after the expulsion / flight, their written memories from 1933 to 1939 brought them back into contact with their former home with the conciliatory tone.

In autumn 2010 the filmmaker Christian Gropper shot a video with Helga Keller, which was integrated into the memorial of the Liberal Synagogue in Darmstadt.

Filmography (selection)

• 1948: Hamlet
• 1954: diamonds
• 1955: Richard III.
• 1957: Saint Joan
• 1958: Bonjour tristesse
• 1966: Sands of Beersheba

Publications

• Colored in minor . Darmstadt - Berlin. 1933-1939. Roether Darmstadt 1996, ISBN 3-792-90223-0

Web links

• Helga Keller in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• hairetz.com: Helga Keller, leading Israeli film editor and educator, dies (English)
• echo-online.de: Reconciled with Darmstadt. Obituary - Helga Keller died in Israel at the age of 91
• darmstadt.de: Contemporary witness reports at the audio terminal (PDF; 37 kB)
• mathilde-frauenzeitung.de: Helga Keller: "I was no longer one of them"