Nurith Aviv

Des mots qui restent (2022)

Six people recall the languages that cradled their childhoods: Judeo-Spanish or Judeo Arabic, or Judeo-Persian. Today, the languages themselves are dying but they left traces that still work on those who heard them as children. ...

Yiddish (2020)

Seven young people tell their personal stories with the Yiddish language while discussing the life and work of avant-garde Yiddish poets. ...

Signing (2018)

By taking an interest in sign languages, Nurith Aviv invites us to expand our perception of the human langage. Three generations of deaf and hearing persons, as well as researchers from a specialised laboratory from the university of Haifa make us discover ...

Poétique du cerveau (2015)

A documentary about brain, his capacities and his poetical aspect using testimonials from researchers around the world. ...

Announcements (2013)

The film Announcements paints the portraits of seven women reflecting on the same theme. Their starting point is the announcement to Hagar, Sarah and Mary as in the Old Testament, the New Testament and the Koran. Their thoughts spread out and weave a new w ...

Traduire (2011)

Sacred Tongue, Profane Language (2008)

The film, the second in a trilogy, containing "Misafa Lesafa" (2004) and "Traduire" (2011), deals with what became of Hebrew, the sacred language of the Jews for two millennia, that became a living language on the creation of the State of Israel in 1948. T ...

Zorro’s Bar Mitzvah (2006)

Four 12-year-olds—Sharon, Tom, Moishy, and Sophie—prepare for their bar or bat mitzvot. ...

Mitten im Malestream (2005)

A documentary essay on the 1960s women's liberation movement in Germany and it's developments and conflicts through the following decades. ...

On the Objection Front (2005)

A film documenting the story of the Israeli refusnik-movement and interviews some of its protagonists. This timely documentary interweaves the stories of six soldiers who, after years of loyal reserve duty and annual active combat, find they can no longer ...

Bruly Bouabré's Alphabet (2005)

The story of Ivory Coast artist, Frédéric Bruly Bouabré, who created four hundred pictograms, based on one-syllable words in his language, Bété, to help people in the Bété community learn to read more quickly. ...

From Language to Language (2004)

For centuries, Hebrew was a sacred language, a written language of prayer and scripture. But today it is also the language of everyday life in Israel. Nurith Aviv, Israeli writers, musicians, actors and a Rabbi/philosopher from varying countries and ethnic ...

L'alphabet de Bruly Bouabré (2004)

Forget Baghdad: Jews and Arabs - The Iraqi Connection (2002)

A documentary film about the Mizrahim, or Jewish community of Iraq. ...

Vaters Land (2002)

Starting from Sigmund Freud's definition of mourning and from Hannah Arendt's observation of the behavior of German intellectuals in 1933, Nurith Aviv lets her friends in Germany speak about what, according to them, has been irrevocably lost. In the backg ...

Homemad(e) (2001)

Marc Aurel-Straße in Vienna: The last surviving Jewish textile merchant in the former textile district, the Iranian hotel proprietor and the Café Salzgries and its regulars. Between the summer of 1999 and spring 2000, Ruth Beckermann undertook a series ...

Circumcision (2000)

Circumcision is not a trivial act. For those parents, mostly "mixed" couples from different religious origins, a choice has to be made before the birth of their children, whether religion has a role in their lives or not. ...

A Fleeting Passage to the Orient (1999)

Images of Egypt: prolonged tracking shots through the streets of Cairo, cafes, bazars, hotels and gardens, footage of the desert and the sea. Ruth Beckermann is on the trail of Empress Elisabeth of Austria ("Sissi"), who travelled the world restlessly and ...

Work, Place (1998)

Foreign labour, a phenomenon typical of the 1990s, is examined here in one village in the Jordan valley. Until the intifada, Palestinians from a nearby village worked the fields, but after one of the community's members was murdered, the farmers decided t ...

Clando (1996)

Proud and determined, the hunter set out, leaving behind his village ravaged by a terrible drought. All the villagers came out to wish him well, and everyone gave what he could: an egg, a handful of peanuts or a few kola nuts... As in the folktale, Sobgui, ...

Nerve (1995)

Psychiatric patients refer to themselves as survivors, victims, former inmates, consumers, or users. "Nerve" potraits four persons from Vienna and New York expressing different positions and experiences of former psychiatric patients. ...

M.M. in Motion (1992)

M.M. IN MOTION was four years in the making and draws upon Ostrovsky's filming of six Monnier choreographies (from 1988 to 1991) in rehearsals and performances. M.M. attempts to translate Monnier's essence, style and humor into cinematic terms using fragme ...

Toward Jerusalem (1991)

In this documentary road movie, Austrian filmmaker Ruth Beckermann records the diverse views and activities of Israelis and Arabs as she travels along the route from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. ...

Lung Ta: The Forgotten Tibet (1990)

The life of the Tibetan people, forty years after the Chinese invasion. Filmed in Amdo and Kham, regions forgotten by the world and absolutely forbidden to filmmakers and journalists until now, this is an exceptional document on the most mysterious civiliz ...

Pour un oui ou pour un non (1989)

Two childhood friends who have not seen each other for a long time decide to meet again. They talk and look for what could have caused their estrangement: words pronounced in a certain way, an intonation etc. Very quickly, an argument begins and turns into ...

Berlin-Jerusalem (1989)

Two interconnected stories in the 1930s, one set in Berlin, the other in Palestine: Mania Vilbouchevich Shohat (1880-1961), called Tania, a Russian Jew and revolutionary, goes from Minsk to Palestine to live on a collective. She promotes feminism and lamen ...

Jane B. by Agnès V. (1988)

The interests, obsessions, and fantasies of two singular artists converge in this inspired collaboration between Agnès Varda and her longtime friend the actor Jane Birkin. Made over the course of a year and motivated by Birkin's fortieth birthday—a mile ...

Body Body (1988)

In his film, Josef Aichholzer observes the search for the perfect body, the golden calf of the leisure society: Meditation, sport, medicine or gene technology may be used but the goal remains the same: the individual gets a sense of life, efficiency and re ...

Brand New Day (1987)

Japan, 1986. At the tail end of the world tour promoting their latest album Revenge, Eurythmics tops the charts. Between concerts, pop duo Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart survey Japan's cultural soundscape with the help of Conny Plank: A world of sounds both ...

The Paper Bridge (1987)

Beckermann's parents met in Vienna after the Holocaust. Tracing the migratory paths of her family before World War II, Beckerman returns to the European Jewish communities which inspired her childhood stories. ...

Seven Women, Seven Sins (1986)

Seven Women, Seven Sins (1986) represents a quintessential moment in film history. The women filmmakers invited to direct for the seven sins were amongst the world's most renown: Helke Sander (Gluttony), Bette Gordon (Greed), Maxi Cohen (Anger), Chantal Ak ...

Esther (1986)

Ahasverus, king of Persia and Media, puts aside Vashti and makes Esther his queen, choosing her among maidens in a kingdom stretching from India to Ethiopia. Esther, using information from Mordecai, her uncle and patron, saves the king from assassination. ...

Atalia (1984)

Atalia is a 40-year-old widow who lost her husband in the Six-Day War and lives on a kibbutz with her adolescent daughter. Lonely and feeling outcast, she enters into a forbidden affair with her daughter's classmate, Matti, an idealistic 19-year-old reject ...

Seven Rooms, Kitchen, Bathroom, for Sale (1984)

An unusual visit to a large, empty apartment. But is it empty or not? Maybe a family has lived there or is going to live there. Maybe a young girl is going to escape from there. Maybe some of the old-timers who lived there never left. The walls themselves ...

Jean-Gina B. (1984)

This film is based on the true story of Jean Bella, who served as an officer in the Belgian Marine while being convinced, from an early age, that he was in fact a woman. Director Jean-Pol Ferbus follows Jean Bella and makes him talk about his life, psychol ...

The French (1982)

Roland-Garros, 1981: For the very first time, a documentary team is allowed to shoot sequences in the backstage of the French Open of tennis of Roland-Garros. William Klein's camera takes us on the heels of the greatest players of the time: Björn Borg, Ji ...

Field Diary (1982)

The story of various journeys through the West Bank and Gaza Strip occupied territories during the months leading up to Israel's invasion of Lebanon. ...

Documenteur (1982)

After separating from the father of her son, a young French woman tries to find lodging and a fresh start in L.A. for herself and her son. ...

Mur Murs (1982)

Venturing from Venice Beach to Watts, Varda looks at the murals of LA as backdrop to and mirror of the city's many cultures. She casts a curious eye on graffiti and photorealism, roller disco & gang violence, evangelical Christians, Hare Krishnas, artists, ...

Boy Takes Girl (1982)

When ten-year-old Aya is left at a kibbutz where children are housed by age instead of gender, not only does she have to get used to dealing with a lot of children, making friends and enemies, she also has to get used to sharing her room with boys... and s ...

The Night The King Was Born (1982)

Two corrupt IDF officers who resale lands in the West Bank put pressure on a Palestinian family man. ...

A Thin Line (1980)

Explores the relationship between an eleven-year-old daughter and her ailing mother, who is losing a grasp of reality in the surrounding environment of insensitivity and cruelty. ...

Weekend Circles (1980)

Four young women spend a long weekend in Tel Aviv. Dorit is an outgoing swinger; Tamara is a depressed divorcée; Lior is the experimenting type; and Gili, just released from the army, is the innocent one. They move from a party to a pub and end up swimmin ...

La fille de Prague avec un sac très lourd (1979)

Who is Milena whose arrival is announced to Sophie and Nicolas by postcard? The train from Prague brings for three weeks, the time of a visa, this young Czech and his bag stuffed with forbidden texts, marginal films and music. She will strive to make them ...

Mais où et donc Ornicar (1979)

They are in their thirties. They have now children, an appartment, a work, cars... and still have loves, dreams and passions. They will meet each other, leave each other, under the eye of their kids. ...

A Woman Like Eve (1979)

A devoted yet stressed out housewife takes a holiday to relax, and falls in love with another woman: a guitar-playing hippie who lives in a commune. ...

Daguerréotypes (1978)

An intimate portrait of the small shops and shopkeepers of the Rue Daguerre in Paris, a picturesque street that has been the filmmaker's home for more than 50 years. ...

Io sono mia (1977)

Vannina and Giacinto are a young married couple who live their relationship in an unequal way; while the girl is submissive to the will of her husband Giacinto, he sees in his bride only the personal object of his sexual satisfaction. ...

One Sings, the Other Doesn't (1977)

The intertwined lives of two women in 1970s France, set against the progress of the women's movement in which Agnes Varda was involved. Pomme and Suzanne meet when Pomme helps Suzanne obtain an abortion after a third pregnancy which she cannot afford. They ...

I, Pierre Rivière, Having Slaughtered My Mother, My Sister and My Brother… (1976)

Based on documents compiled by leading French philosopher Michel Foucault, this unique and original film charts the gruesome events which took place in a Normandy village in 1835, when a young man, Pierre Rivière, murdered his mother, sister and brother b ...

The Pleasure of Love in Iran (1976)

An Iranian man and a French woman stroll around the city of Isfahan, Iran and find that their love is mirrored perfectly in the architecture and mosaics of the city's mosques. ...

The Story of Paul (1975)

A young man is checked into a mental hospital for unexplained reasons. ...

Anna and Edith (1975)

Anna and Edith are colleagues at an insurance company. Their male chef uses the women's business success to his own advances. Anna's husband would prefer her to be at home. Anna and Edith become a couple, but it doesn't end with a romantic rendez-vous. Tog ...

Beautiful Jimmy (1973)

This documentary, directed by Boaz Davidson, was originally intended to warn youth against drug abuse. The film offers an intimate portrait of Shmuel Adi, known as Handsome Jimmy, a 29-year-old man who lives in Tel Aviv and is addicted to opiates and other ...

Nurith Aviv - Woman with a Camera (2023)

For the first time, filmmaker Nurith Aviv sits down in front of the camera. As the defenders fall out, her unique life story as the first woman cinematographer in Europe turns out to be the key to her own films. ...

Circumcision (2000)

Circumcision is not a trivial act. For those parents, mostly "mixed" couples from different religious origins, a choice has to be made before the birth of their children, whether religion has a role in their lives or not. ...