Early beginnings through the 1950s

Oded The Wanderer
This is the land : fifty years of Palestine

The Israeli film industry is actually based on a pre-state Ottoman Palestinian [silent] film production that started as early as 1896, when the Lumiere brothers sent a cinematographer to the Holy Land. Later on, The first film of Palestine (Murray Rosenberg, 1911) and The life of the Jews in Palestine (Noah Sokolovsky, 1913), were produced for the Zionist Congresses’ attendees (Basel, 1911 and Vienna, 1913). In the next few decades, additional documentaries, news reels, and propaganda films were produced by enthusiastic Zionist filmmakers such as Yaakov Ben-Dov (‘the father of the Hebrew film’), Barukh Agadati, Yerushalayim Segal, Nathan Axelrod and Helmar Lerski. The first [silent] feature film was produced in 1932 (Oded the wanderer, by Chaim Halachmi); it tells the story of Oded, “a Jewish child in the land of his ancestors,”[1] as he gets lost in the wilderness, and his encounters with the local Bedouins. They treat him with respect and welcome his offer to teach them western culture knowledge and ‘modernize’ their life. In 1935, Agadati released the first ‘talkie,’ titled This is the land : Fifty years of Palestine – a collage of news reels, documentary segments, staged historical vignettes, and sketch comedy. At the same year, Helmar Lerski directed Avodah (‘work’ in Hebrew) -- a unique ‘leftist’ art film that depicted the landscape and Jewish laborers of Mandatory Palestine.[2] In 1947 Lerski directed Adamah (‘land’ in Hebrew) -- a semi documentary film about the Jewish youth village Ben-Shemen and the life of young Holocaust survivors as they try to heal their trauma by working the land.[3]

Hill 24 doesn't answer
Tel Aviv taxi

In the first decade of the newly established Israeli state, starting in 1948, the film industry was in its infant years, with the production of only a few feature films, such as Hill 24 doesn't answer (Thorold Dickinson, 1955), Without Home (Nouri Haviv, 1956), and Tel Aviv taxi (Larry Frisch, 1956). Hill 24 doesn’t answer, set during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, is considered the first ‘significant’ feature film produced in the young state. While it was produced and performed by mainly a foreign crew and cast, directed by a British director, and the dialogue was entirely in English, it dramatized the Zionist narrative and the heroic Israeli ethos of an altruistic commitment of the individual to the national collective – all four protagonists are killed in battle, but the hill is conquered and becomes an Israeli territory.[4] Depicting the grueling voyage of a young Jewish woman from Yemen to the Holy Land, Without Home was a first in a few ways: the first Israeli feature in color, the first directed by an Israeli director and performed solely by Israeli actors, and the first to deal with Mizrahi Jews and their difficulties immigrating to Israel. Tel Aviv taxi (also known as Tale of a taxi), the first Hebrew speaking comedy, is based on seven short stories of random taxi passengers and their driver, while their car is stranded on their way from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.


[1] The plot is based on Tsevi Livneh’s book ʻOded ha-noded (Ḳupat ha-sefer, Tel Aviv, 1932). See also http://www.filmography.co.il/articles/64-story-to-film.html#_edn11 [Hebrew].

[2] Jan-Christopher, Horak. The Penetrating Power of Light: The Films of Helmar Lerski, in: Image, Vol. 36, Nos. 3/4, 1993, 40-53.

[3] Adamah was re-edited and distributed in the United States under the title Tomorrow's a Wonderful Day.

[4] Yaʻel Munḳ, Nurit Gerts. Be-mabaṭ le-aḥor : ḳeriʼah ḥozeret ba-ḳolnoʻa ha-Yiśreʼeli 1948-1990. ha-Universiṭah ha-Petuḥah, Raʻananah, 2015, 9-22 [Hebrew].