Background
Lia Greenberg was born on August 8, 1924 in the Bessarabian city of Bălți, then in Romania, now in Moldova. Her father, Simon Greenberg, was a wheat exporter and her mother, Olga, was a WIZO volunteer.
Lia Greenberg was born on August 8, 1924 in the Bessarabian city of Bălți, then in Romania, now in Moldova. Her father, Simon Greenberg, was a wheat exporter and her mother, Olga, was a WIZO volunteer.
She attended a public high school and spent summer holidays in the Carpathian mountains.
In July 1941, the Germans murdered her father and other Jewish community leaders. Lia moved to Jerusalem in 1943 to attend the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. They founded the country"s first film club in 1955.
"There was no television back then
Each Friday we would have friends over to watch movies. Our house became the most popular in Haifa", she recalled.
This film club became the Haifa Cinematheque. The Van Leers" private collection of films was the basis for the Israeli Film Archive, founded in 1960.
In 1973, a Brazilian businessman, George Ostrovsky, who dreamt of creating a cinematheque in Israel, approached the van Leers and persuaded them and Teddy Kollek to share his dream.
Ostrovsky donated the necessary funds to build the Jerusalem Film Center (comprising the Israel Film Archives and the Jerusalem Cinematheque) in the Hinnom Valley below the Old City walls. The Jerusalem Cinematheque opened in 1981, and Lia van Leer was named its first director In its first year, eight films were submitted.
In 2008, 90 films contended for the prize.
In 1995, she head the jury at the 45th Berlin International Film Festival. Lia van Leer died on March 13, 2015, aged 90, from undisclosed causes.
