The Hebrews Initiative is a creative laboratory for biographical documentaries about prominent writers in the field of Hebrew and Jewish culture. The project invites top directors to create films that combine a biographical story, translation of the textual work into cinematic visuals, original music and personal interpretation to create original films that combine poetry and literature with documentary film. So far there have been 14 documentaries.
The great outsider poet Avot Yeshoron was the first to write about the Naqba, mixing Hebrew, Arabic and Yiddish. Haunted for most of his life, he gained great respect in his final years, becoming a hero of a generation.
Year: 2018
Language: Hebrew, English subtitles
Director: Amichai Chasson
Pr...
"King of the Jews" is a portrait of the most beloved Jew of his day, Chaim Nachman Bialik. By the age of thirty he'd already become the most famous poet in the Jewish world. He spent very few years living in Tel Aviv, but he loved the city dearly.
Year: 2014
Language: Hebrew, English subtitles ...
In 1921, six dead bodies were found near the Red House between Tel Aviv and Jaffa. One was the body of Y.H. Brenner, a brilliant author, the sharp critic of his generation, a man of ambiguous sexuality and the characteristics of a raging prophet.
Year: 2015
Language: Hebrew, English subtitles
Di...
Rabbi David Buzaglo was the greatest Hebrew liturgical poet of the twentieth century. Born in Morocco in 1903, his literary output had a major impact on a community of hundreds of thousands of people.
Year: 2015
Language: Hebrew, English subtitles
Director: Rafael Balulu
Producer: Yair Qedar
Wri...
The Raven is a touching and exciting portrait of one of Israel's most contradictory figures. Born in Odessa, Jabotinsky was a brilliant writer and passionate spokesperson for Russia's ethnic minorities. Eventually refocusing his energies and skills to the Zionist cause, he established the controv...
In a tiny apartment in Jerusalem, surrounded by dolls and cats, Miriam Yalan-Shteklis wrote her beloved children's poems. Director Reuven Brodsky uses miniatures created specifically for the film and interviews with her acquaintances to tell the story of the most loved Israeli children writer.
Y...
A documentary on the life of Hebrew poet Rachel Blubstein, known simply as Rachel, considered a national poet of Israel. Includes interviews with literary researchers, poets, historians, and biographers.
Year: 2015
Language: Hebrew, English subtitles
Director: Sivan Arbel
Producer: Yair Qedar
S...
Very few details are known about Rabbi Shalom Shabazi, but 400 years after his death, Shabazi is as popular as ever and is considered one of the greatest Yemenite poets. The film takes the audience on a journey through the extraordinary life of one of the greatest Hebrew writers.
Year: 2018
Lang...
The incredible story of Avraham Sutskever, the greatest Yiddish poet, who saved manuscripts from the Nazis, survived WWII due to Stalin's special rescue plane, testified in the Nuremberg Trials, and died anonymously in Tel Aviv.
Year: 2018
Languages: Yiddish & English, English subtitles
Director...
She died 41 years ago, but even today, Lea Goldberg is still an enigmatic figure. She is Israel's most beloved poet, a woman who invented herself from the ashes of the first World War through her magical poetry.
Year: 2011
Language: Hebrew, English subtitles
Director: Yair Qedar
Producer: Yair ...
A cinematic journey into the world of Yona Wallach, an Israeli poet, whose radical life and poetry ended with her death at an early age, leaving behind a myth and a trail of admirers.
Year: 2012
Language: Hebrew, English subtitles
Director: Yair Qedar
Producer: Yair Qedar
Writer: Yair Qedar
St...
She published her first book of poetry at the age of 53 and became a prominent figure in the field of Hebrew literature. Niece of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, living alone in Jerusalem, writing poems of pieces of paper, surrounded by a small court of lovers and admirers.
Year: 2015
Language: Hebrew, E...
Director Rafael Balulu goes on a journey in the footsteps of the Levantine thinker and author Jacqueline Kahanoff. Through encounters with her elderly friends in Paris, leading intellectuals in the Mizrachi discourse in Israel and fascinating Levantine women artists, he not only draws a portrait ...
