Chaim Dov Halachmi (1902-1979) was an Israeli film pioneer. He is mostly remembered for having directed the film, Oded the Wanderer (‘Oded hanoded’) (1932) – the first ever feature-length film to have been made in the land (then-British Mandatory Palestine).
Halachmi was born in Ukraine and in 1925, moved to Palestine and joined actor Menhem Gnessin’s Theatre Studio. He started out as a student before becoming a teacher, overtime. Halachmi had numerous stage acting roles, and was also a theatre translator. Towards the end of the 1920s, he joined the satirical Broom (‘matate’) Theatre company. In 1929, he helped establish Zohar Films, a production company where he worked as a director. He also founded Kino Studia, a professional film acting school.
In 1932, Halachmi started the FAI studio (a Hebrew acronym meaning Land of Israel Film) where he then directed the short, Once Upon a Time (‘Va’yehi Be’May’), a silent comedy starring Moshe Choorgel about a tailor who flees his wife at the height of the Purim holiday festivities, and finds shelter amidst all the commotion of the annual Purim Day Parade (‘adloyada.’)
His son, Joseph Halachmi (1933-2019), was a TV director and producer, and a film scholar and historian.
