Nurith Aviv is a director and cinematographer who has made films both in Israel and in France. In her documentaries as a director, Aviv has revisited the theme of language time and time again; a prevalent motif both in her 2020 film, Yiddish, and in her earlier film trilogy: From Language to Language (2004) which won Best Film at the DocAviv Documentary Film Festival, Langue sacrée, langue parlée (‘sacred language, spoken language’) (2008), and Traduire (2011).
Highlights of her cinematographer credits include Boaz Davidson’s Shablul (1970), Idit Shehori’s Weekend Circles (1980), Michal Bat-Adam’s A Thin Line (1980) and Boy Meets Girl (1982), Agnès Verda’s Jane B. for Agnes V. (1988, co-cinematographer), and Amos Gitai’s Berlin-Jerusalem (1990, co-cinematographer). Highlights of her directing credits include Kfar Qar’a, Israel (1989), Makom, Avoda (place, work) (1997), Vater’s Land (2002), and Poétique du cerveau (‘poetics of the brain’) (2015).
In the year 2000, Paris’s Jeu de Paume museum hosted a retrospective of Aviv’s work. In 2015, she was honoured with a second Parisian retrospective, this time at the Centre Pompidou. In 2019, Aviv appeared as herself in Agnès Verda’s film, Varda by Agnès.
