Joel Silberg (1927-2013) was a film, television, and theatre director. Born in Tel Aviv, Silberg spent the 1950s working mostly in theatre and in 1960, he worked as Otto Preminger’s Assistant Director on the latter’s film, Exodus. In 1962, Silberg teamed up with Nathan Axelrod and Uri Zohar to make the hugely successful The True Story of Palestine, and later also directed the comedy, The Simhon Family (1964). The Simhon Family was the first in a string of working class comedies and melodramas (aka ‘Bourekas films’) which Silberg would spend the next two decades directing, including Hasamba & The Black Handkerchief Gang (1971), Marriage Games (1973), Kuni Leml in Tel Aviv (1976), Hershele (1977), Millionaire in Trouble (1978), Marriage Tel Aviv Style (1979), and My Mother the General (1979). In 1984, Silberg joined Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus’s The Cannon Group, Inc. in the US, where his niche quickly became the period’s then-immensely popular dance films such as Breakin’ (1984), and Lambada (1990). At the same time, he also directed a handful of action films. In 1995, Silberg created and directed Israel’s first-ever primetime soap, Ramat Aviv Gimmel which aired for six seasons and was a huge ratings success for the country’s then newest broadcaster, Channel 2. In 2008, Silberg was named the recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Israeli Academy of Film and Television.
