Aviva Kempner | |
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 kempner in 2011 | |
| Born | December 23, 1946 |
| Nationality | American |
| Alma mater | University of Michigan |
Aviva Kempner (born December 23, 1946) is a German-born American filmmaker. Her documentaries investigate non-stereotypical images of Jews in history and focus on the untold stories of Jewish people. She is most well known for The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg .
A child of Holocaust survivor Helen Ciesla, a Polish citizen, and Harold Kempner, a US Army officer, Kempner was born in Berlin, Germany, after World War II. [1] [2] Her family history inspired her to create her first documentary, Partisans of Vilna (1986). She grew up in Detroit and has a brother, Jonathan. [2] Kempner lives in Washington, DC and is an activist for voting rights for the District of Columbia. [3]
She was a member of the Class of 1976 at the progressive Antioch School of Law. [4] In 1981, Kempner founded The Ciesla Foundation to produce films that investigate non-stereotypical images of Jews in history and celebrate the untold stories of Jewish heroes. [3] In 1986, Kempner conceived and produced Partisans of Vilna , a documentary on Jewish resistance against the Nazis, Fareynikte Partizaner Organizatsye. [5] She co-founded the Washington Jewish Film Festival in 1989 together with Miriam Mörsel Nathan, and served as the festival's Founding Director. [6]
Additionally, she was the executive producer of the 1989 Grammy Award-nominated record Partisans of Vilna: The Songs of World War II Jewish Resistance. [7]
She is the scriptwriter, director and producer of The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg , a film about first Jewish baseball star in the Major Leagues. [8]
In 2009, she produced Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg , a 90-minute documentary about Gertrude Berg, a popular American radio and television personalities who received the first Best Actress Emmy in history and paved the way for women in media and entertainment. [9] Berg was the creator, principal writer, and star of the popular 1930s radio show and then the 1950s weekly televised situation comedy, The Goldbergs . [10]
Kempner made Rosenwald (2015), a feature-length historical documentary about businessman and philanthropist Julius Rosenwald, who partnered with Booker T. Washington and African American communities to build over 5,000 schools in the Jim Crow South. [11] The Rosenwald Fund also provided grants to support a who's who of African American artists and intellectuals. [12]
She is also the co-writer and co-producer of Casuse, a film about Larry Casuse, a young Native American activist who kidnapped the Mayor of Gallup, New Mexico to draw attention to the plight of the Navajo people and to expose the hypocrisy of the establishment.
Kempner directed, wrote and produced The Spy Behind Home Plate, the first full-length documentary about Moe Berg, a Jewish baseball player, who caught and fielded in the Major Leagues from the 1920s through 1939 during baseball's Golden Age and his activities with the US Office of Strategic Services (OSS). [13] When asked about lessons she hoped viewers would take away from the film in a 2019 interview with Sporting News, Kempner said:
I think we need to know our history of how at a time when the world was in peril, and how a sports hero, someone in baseball, wound up being a real American hero. You know for me also, having done a Hank Greenberg film but also knowing about Ted Williams and Joe Dimaggio going off to war, their stats are not what they would have been if they hadn't sacrificed for their country. Moe would have probably ended up being a manager afterward. They not only sacrificed their lives, but also their sports standing. [14]
She writes film criticism and feature articles for numerous publications, including The Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, Crystal City Magazine, The Forward, Baltimore Jewish Times, Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Legal Times, New York Times, The Wrap, Washington Jewish Week and The Washington Post.
Kempner said in a 2009 interview with FF2 Media's Jan Huttner: "In The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg, we use this line: 'When America needed a hero, a Jewish slugger stepped to the plate.' I think you can also say: 'When America needed a hero, a Jewish mother was there for you.'" [15]
Kempner is currently co-producing and co-directing Imagining the Indian: The Fight Against Native American Mascoting, a full length documentary exploring the history of using Native American images in mascoting and the fight to change the name of current professional sports teams. [16] [17]
Kempner is also producing and directing a short film, Pissed Off, exploring the under-publicized struggles faced by female lawmakers in Congress who advocated for equal access to restroom facilities in their place of work, the United States Capitol, and a full length documentary on Academy Award winning Hollywood screenwriter, Ben Hecht. Ben Hecht was a Jewish screenwriter as well as novelist, playwright, journalist, and activist. He worked to rescue European Jewry and helped to expose the nature of the Holocaust and the need for a Jewish homeland to the American public.
Source: [18]
Henry Benjamin Greenberg, nicknamed "Hammerin' Hank", "Hankus Pankus", and "the Hebrew Hammer", was an American professional baseball player and team executive. He played in Major League Baseball (MLB), primarily for the Detroit Tigers as a first baseman in the 1930s and 1940s. A member of the Baseball Hall of Fame and a two-time Most Valuable Player (MVP) Award winner, he was one of the premier power hitters of his generation and is widely considered one of the greatest sluggers in baseball history.
The Goldbergs is a comedy-drama broadcast from 1929 to 1946 on American radio, and from 1949 to 1956 on American television. It was adapted into a 1948 play, Me and Molly; a 1950 film The Goldbergs, and a 1973 Broadway musical, Molly. It also briefly spun off a comic strip from June 8, 1944, to December 21, 1945, with art by Irwin Hasen, a comic book artist who worked on various DC Comics titles and would later do the Dondi comic strip.
Gertrude Berg was an American actress, screenwriter, and producer. A pioneer of classic radio, she was one of the first women to create, write, produce, and star in a long-running hit when she premiered her serial comedy-drama The Rise of the Goldbergs (1929), later known as The Goldbergs. Her career achievements included winning a Tony Award and an Emmy Award, both for Best Lead Actress.
Julius Rosenwald was an American businessman and philanthropist. He is best known as a part-owner and leader of Sears, Roebuck and Company, and for establishing the Rosenwald Fund, which donated millions in matching funds to promote vocational or technical education. In 1919 he was appointed to the Chicago Commission on Race Relations. He was also the principal founder and backer for the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, to which he gave more than $5 million and served as president from 1927 to 1932.
Abba Kovner was a Jewish partisan leader, and later Israeli poet and writer. In the Vilna Ghetto, his manifesto was the first time that a target of the Holocaust identified the German plan to murder all Jews. His attempt to organize a ghetto uprising failed. He fled into the forest, joined Soviet partisans, and survived the war. After the war, Kovner led Nakam, a paramilitary organization of Holocaust survivors who sought to take genocidal revenge by murdering six million Germans, but Kovner was arrested in British-occupied Germany before he could successfully carry out his plans. He made aliyah to Mandatory Palestine in 1947, which would become the State of Israel one year later. Considered one of the greatest authors of Modern Hebrew poetry, Kovner was awarded the Israel Prize in 1970.
Keep Not Silent is a 2004 Israeli documentary film directed and produced by Ilil Alexander about three lesbians in Jerusalem. Ilil had just graduated from Tel-Aviv University Film School.
Steven Pressman is an American documentary filmmaker, journalist, author of two books, and director/producer of the documentary film 50 Children: The Rescue Mission of Mr. and Mrs. Kraus" and three subsequent documentary films.
Jewish partisans were fighters in irregular military groups participating in the Jewish resistance movement against Nazi Germany and its collaborators during World War II.
The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg is a 1998 documentary film written, directed, and produced by Aviva Kempner about Hank Greenberg, first baseman of the Detroit Tigers, who was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. A Jewish player who chose not to play on Yom Kippur in 1934 during a heated pennant race, Greenberg had to face a great deal of antisemitism. In 1938 he nearly broke Babe Ruth's 60 home run record by hitting 58 home runs.
Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg is a 2009 documentary film on the broadcast career of Gertrude Berg and her radio and television serials, The Goldbergs. Aviva Kempner directed the film, interviewing family members of Berg, cast members of the Goldbergs and historians of radio and television. She also includes interview statements by non-celebrities, and celebrities, including All Things Considered anchor Susan Stamberg, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, television sitcom producer Norman Lear and Mary Tyler Moore Show actor Ed Asner.
The Washington Jewish Film Festival (WJFF), in Washington, D.C., is one of the world's oldest and largest Jewish film festivals. Focusing on Jewish and Israeli issues, the festival has shown hundreds of films ranging both in genre and theme and held in the Aaron & Cecile Goldman Theater in the Washington DC Jewish Community Center and other cinemas in Washington and suburban Maryland and Virginia. The festival was founded by Aviva Kempner in 1989 and has successfully run for over twenty years and is presented by the Washington DCJCC's Morris Cafritz Center for the Arts.
Jews and Baseball: An American Love Story is a 2010 American documentary film narrated by Academy Award-winner Dustin Hoffman, written by Pulitzer Prize-winner Ira Berkow, and directed by award-winning documentary filmmaker Peter Miller. It is about the connection and history between American Jews and baseball.
Rachel Margolis was a Holocaust survivor, partisan, biologist and Holocaust historian.
Miriam Mörsel Nathan is an American visual artist. Her work is abstract and process based. Through the mediums of drawing and printing, the use of repetition and a combination of materials, she seeks to connect disparate elements and fragments in her works on paper. The driving force behind the work is to make whole what is not whole at all. She is also a published poet.
Rozka or Ruzka Korczak was a Jewish partisan leader during World War II. A Polish Jew, she served in the Fareynikte Partizaner Organizatsye and, alongside Vitka Kempner and founder Abba Kovner, assumed a leadership role in its successor group, the Avengers (Nakam)--the only known undefeated ghetto uprising in the history of the Holocaust.
3 Generations is a non-profit documentary film production company based in New York City.
Roberta Grossman is an American filmmaker. Her documentaries range from social justice inquiries to historical subjects with a focus on Jewish history.
Rosenwald: A Remarkable Story of a Jewish Partnership with African American Communities is a 2015 documentary film written and directed by Aviva Kempner about the career of American businessman and philanthropist Julius Rosenwald. It debuted on February 25, 2015 at the Washington Jewish Film Festival.
Karin Albou is a French-Algerian female director, writer, editor, producer and actress.
Moriah Films is the Jack and Pearl Resnick Film Division of the Simon Wiesenthal Center.
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