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The film uncovers a fascinating story of Fred Dunkel, a German Christian, photographer, producer and businessman, who was married to a Jewish woman and was forced to leave Nazi Germany in the 1930’s for Palestine (today’s Israel), along with his wife and daughter. Dunkel, who was a member of the Nazi party, was declared deserter by the German authorities. In Israel, he became a photographer and director, recruited for Zionist propaganda. He also provided shooting and editing services for different institutions and private parties, British and Jewish alike.

In his work, Fred Dunkel documents the development of the settlement period in Israel, from the 1930’s to the establishment of the state of Israel. After the death of his first wife, he married Martha, a Czech immigrant and Holocaust survivor, who had come to Israel at the outbreak of the Second World War.

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A talented boxer in the glamorous Tel Aviv of the 1930s challenges an international champion.Despite his unexpected victory, the boxer prefers to remain in Israel with his girlfriend rather than embark on an international career.

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This is one of Palestine’s earliest sound films and part of a larger campaign to encourage settlement and investment in “the Jewish homeland.” Land of Promise emphasizes secular accomplishments and portrays Zionist settlers with considerable cinematographic and editorial skill. Punctuated by evocative close-ups, this part-documentary, part-travelogue, part-message film shows Palestine as a land of opportunity, the place for fulfilling an ancient dream. Preserved by and made available in cooperation with the International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House.

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Two women, the German Else Lasker-Schüler and the Russian Mania Shohat, are each travelling to Jerusalem, a mythical but also very real city that they must confront. Based on the biographies of these two women, one of the first Russian Zionists and a German Expressionist poetess, the film moves back and forth between the dim cafés of Berlin in the 1930s and the hills of Jerusalem. Berlin Jerusalem is the history of crushed utopias.

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In the early 1930s, Hitler began forcing Jewish musicians out of orchestras, leaving some of Europe’s most talented musicians jobless. This film tells of a brilliant young musician’s coming of age, and how he came together with some of the most famous Jews in the world to create the Palestine Orchestra (now the Israel Philharmonic).

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Wilfrid Israel, the owner of a department store in the center of Berlin, was one of the great saviors of Jews during the Holocaust ? and played a key role in the Kindertransport operation. The story of one extraordinary man becomes very personal as filmmaker Yonatan Nir takes us on a journey from ? a? kibbutz in northern Israel to Germany in the 1930’s. The filmmaker, who was born on the kibbutz where Wilfrid’s name was known but his story? ?was kept secret?, takes us on an adventure as he searches for the mysterious hero, and for the reasons? for his disappearance ?from history.

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