Adam Greenberg (1936 -2025) was a director of photography and one of Israel’s most prolific cinematographers. Polish-born Greenberg moved to Israel in his teens and began his film career as a lab technician and cameraman at the legendary Geva Studios and their then-immensely popular Geva Newsreels. In the early days, the main bulk of his work was made up of shooting newsreels and many propaganda and PR films including documentary shorts At Nahalal (Emil Knebel, 1962), and David Perlov’s In Jerusalem (1962) that won him the bronze medal at the Venice Film Festival and to this day is considered one of Israeli film’s greatest masterpieces.
In 1966, Greenberg shot his first-ever feature film, Israel Becker’s The Flying Matchmaker. Then in 1968, he shot Avraham Heffner’s masterful short, Slow Down, that won the Venice Film Festival’s Best Short Film prize and remains one of the most defining works of Israeli cinema’s New Sensibility movement.
In the 1970s Greenberg was one of the most prolific, sought-after cinematographers in Israeli film. Highlights of his highest-profile collaborators include directors Uri Zohar on the television programme, Lool, and the cult classic Peeping Toms (1972); David Perlov on 42:6 – Ben Gurion (1969), and The Pill (1972); Menahem Golan on Diamonds (1975), and Operation Thunderbolt (1977), the latter of which was nominated for an Oscar in the Best Foreign Language Film category; and Moshé Mizrahi on I Love you Rosa (1972) that made the Cannes Film Festival’s official selection that year, and was also nominated for a Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, The House on Chelouche Street (1973) which also earned an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Film, and Daughters, Daughters that was featured at the Cannes Film Festival.
In the eighties, after working on the Hollywood war film The Big Red One (Samuel Fuller, 1980) that was shot in Israel, Greenberg relocated to the US. He soon found a place for himself in the American film industry and went on to shoot some of Hollywood’s biggest blockbusters of the 1980s and ‘90s including The Terminator (James Cameron, 1984), Ghost (Jerry Zucker, 1990), and Rush Hour (Brett Ratner, 1998). Greenberg’s camerawork on James Cameron’s Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1992), the long-awaited sequel to his 1984 smash hit, earned him an Oscar nomination.
Highlights of Greenberg’s other cinematographic credits include Before Tomorrow (Ellida Geira, 1969), I am a Jerusalemite (Yehoram Gaon, 1971), Hasamba & The Black Handkerchief Gang (Joel Silberg, 1971), My Michael (Dan Wolman, 1975), A Movie and Breakfast (Alfred Steinhardt, 1977), 500K Cash in Hand (aka ‘Hamesh Ma’ot Elef Shahor’) (Shaike Ophir, 1977), Belfer (Igal Bursztyn, 1978), Lemon Popsicle (Boaz Davidson, 1978), Going Steady (Boaz Davidson, 1979), Private Popsicle (Boaz Davidson, 1982), A Woman Called Golda (Alan Gibson, 1982), 10 to Midnight (J. Lee Thompson, 1984), The Ambassador (J. Lee Thompson, 1984), Iron Eagle (Sidney J. Furie, 1986), Three Men and a Baby (Leonard Nimoy, 1987), Turner & Hooch (Roger Spottiswoode, 1989), Sister Act (Emile Ardolino, 1992), Toys (Barry Levinson, 1992), Dave (Ivan Reitman, 1993), Dave (Ivan Reitman, 1994), Junior (Ivan Reitman, 1994), First Knight (Jerry Zucker, 1995), Eraser (Chuck Russell, 1996), Inspector Gadget (David Kellogg, 1999), and Snakes on a Plane (David R. Ellis, 2006).
